don’t be a jerk

So I’ve been seeing a new girl for the past few months. She’s a real cheery type. Ebullient and optimistic, I would even say.

She also happens to probably be the one person in the world that knows even less about football than I do.

I don’t care a lick about the Patriots nor the Giants, but I found myself getting drawn into the game more and more, and by the end I was yelling at the top of my lungs for the Giants.

Aside from having to explain to the girl what a 3rd-down conversion is, and pretty much how the entire game of football works, I also had to justify my decision to root for the Giants. She had decided to root for the Patriots.

“It’s so sad,” she said. “Why don’t you want them to have a perfect season?”

That got me thinking. Why was I rooting for the underdog? Is this a sign that I hate perfection? Does this mean that I secretly resent success in others and, maybe, in myself?

I think the reason I rooted for the Giants was because of the magnitude of the mismatch coming into the game.

Had the Patriots played another team this year, one that, at least by the numbers, more closely matched with the Pats, then I think I would have rooted for the Pats. I would have cheered them into a perfect season. In my mind, it would have been an earned achievement.

However, the press couldn’t stop talking about how much better the Patriots were than the Giants. An unlikely Giants victory would be “possibly the greatest upset in Super Bowl history”. By some accounts, this year’s Giants didn’t even deserve to be in the Super Bowl.

I rooted for the Giants because this wasn’t a fair fight. I rooted for the Giant’s because the mismatch in this game reminded me of standing up to bullies in grammar school. I rooted for them because the pre-game press reminded me of times when I strove to succeed when no one gave me any chance or credit. And I cheered for them because true, compelling, history-making drama does not come from the stronger defeating the weaker, or even from the slightly weaker defeating the slightly stronger, but in the rare times when the the child defeats the giant. The writers of the Bible decided to include the story of “David and Goliath”, not the story of “Biff and Mongo, who was a bit larger than Biff.”

So I’m not anti-success. I’m human.

We all find success in our own way. There are times in our lives when we are truly remarkable and others admire us in these best moments. And sometimes, we are the ones that watch others in their Big Show. And we’re fascinated by these moments and these people. We want to be them, and be around them, and watch them succeed, because these times are as rare as they are significant.

But these moments must come under fair and noble circumstances. They must earned. They must not come at the expense of those that remind us of ourselves - because then we abandon the allure of perfection to rally to the defense of our own…like the 2007 Giants.

That being said, I hope my Steelers make a good showing next season.

Just so folks know, iWeb (good riddance) always splarged out my URL to be “http://www.trickstergod.com/blog/try_and/try_and.html”

It’s just “http://www.trickstergod.com/blog/” now. That way you should stop getting the 404 page that comes up with the old URL.

E*star LA tagged me awhile back. I don’t always do these things, but this seemed open-ended and fun enough. I’ll try not to repeat revelations from this post.

The Rules (as copied from her blog):

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

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Okay, so here are 8 things:
 

1. Fruit Flavors
   Cherries are one of my favorite fruits, but I tend to dislike artificial cherry flavoring. I gravitate towards foods with strawberry artificial flavoring, but I’m a bit indifferent to actual strawberries. Real bananas are okay but I hate anything with artificial banana flavoring.

 

2. Co-Dependency
   The one person that I’ve spent the most time with - more than anyone else in the world for the past 8-10 years - is Mike G. This includes my parents, girlfriends, other friends, and even any of my roommates. We have been at the same workplace for the past 7-8 years and literally in the same room for most of that. We’re cordial, but at this point, we’re both a little dead on the inside.

 

3. Fucking Cat
   This fucking cat is in my room right now. I left the door open for air and he just walked in. Noooo Kitty! Go outside. I am allergic to you. This is not your home. Don’t eat my fucking bird.
   

 

4. Sleepy
   I slept on a futon for over 10 years. A really shitty one. I finally bought a bed last last March (a little over a year ago) and I love it.

 

5. Scary Man
   There was this one week in college where at least 4 separate friends individually mentioned to me that they thought I didn’t like them when we had first met. They all thought I was “scary” or “intimidating”.
   That made me angry so I punched all of them a lot.

 

6. Transportation
   The vehicles I have owned (or been in charge of): Toyota Cressida Station Wagon, Hyundai Sonata, Jeep Wrangler, Suzuki SV650 motorcycle, Toyota Sienna minivan. The bike was named Suzy, and the van is currently named Herbert. The other cars didn’t have names. All were boys, except for Suzy who was a girl.

 

7. Regular
   I drink Metamucil every day. A few months back, I ate red meat almost exclusively for an entire week. It was awesome. It started to become less and less awesome as the week went on and somewhere around the end of it, I decided to try some Metamucil to get things going again. I liked it so much that I’ve been taking it ever since. It makes me happy regular. It also makes me wear black socks and sandals with my short pants while I yell at those god damn kids to get off my fucking lawn.

 

8. Dirty Slob
   I hate cleaning my apartment. The process isn’t necessarily that unpleasant, per say, I just find it to be an incredible waste of time. The number one reason I want to make lots of money when I grow up is so that I can buy the love of other people, because I’m sure the hell not going to waste time trying to earn it. The number two reason I want to make lots of money is so that I can afford for a person to come out and clean my house every week, because I’m sure the hell not going to do that either.

 

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Okay, apologies to E*star for taking so long to finish this. I’m apparently supposed to tag 8 other people to do this. I thought I’d only hit up 4, but sho’ nuff, I found 8 that I felt like hearing from. Those are (whether they decide to do it or not), Mike G., Spiffy, Sasstastic, Chezmiko, Freddie, Suzy, Marv, Rickmondo.

The spiders are coming. Big ones.

How do I know this? Simple:

It’s hot as fuck.
And humid too. I went to New York last week, it wasn’t as hot and humid as it was here in LA, and that’s quite a feat in the middle of July. Whenever it’s this hot and humid, all spiderkind collectively decides to start turning into tarantulas. Tarantulas, on the other hand…they just stay tarantulas. No need to overcompensate.

Spider babies are everywhere.
I’ve been seeing them in room, in my bed, on the outside wall of my building, and everywhere else really. I haven’t suddenly stopped drinking or anything, so I know that these are the real deal. When spiders are this small I tend to leave them be. But it starts to get unsettling when you ignore the seventh one in the same evening. Especially when you know that they’re striving to grow up into tarantulas.

Some bastard-whore spider keeps spinning a web across my front step.
Every night for the past week, I’ve approached the front door of my building and walked through a spiderweb that was spun across the walkway, and then did the ensuing “Get them off me Get them off me Oh dear sweet Moses get them off me” dance. What other reason would a spider have to spin a web across a walkway unless it was planning on capturing human-sized prey - the human-sized prey that would be required to feed its monstrous tarantula babies.

I normally don’t kill adult spiders. I usually pinch them in a tissue and toss them outside so that they can protect my home from the cricket hordes. But I think I may just start whacking these guys with a shoe pretty soon. There are too many of them and it’s too damn hot these days for me to care.

Part II of my 72 Hour Film Shootout experience. You can read Part I here.

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I’m pretty nasty and wrecked when I wake up the next morning. I pop a couple of Excedrin and a red bull and head over to Rickmond’s wife’s shop with Neil.

We get there before Rickmond. He’s characteristically late, but I ain’t bitchin cause it’s a kick-ass (and free) location.

Here’s a rundown of our equipment:

• 1x rickety, eleven-year-old first-gen, Canon XL-1 with XLR adapter. I thought this thing was on it’s last legs 4 years ago, but it still refuses to die. (mine)
• 1x average quality Audiotechnica boom mic (mine)
• 2x China balls from Ikea with 100 watt lights inside them. We don’t want to go much higher than that and risk burning the paper. (Neil’s)
• 3x stingers (Neil’s)
• 3x 600 watt NRG lights with barndoors and pic stands (from our buddy Vince.)
• Assorted gels and diffusions, 3 large bounce boards, a boom pole, a bag of tools and adapters, a really crappy 13 inch bedside TV (to serve as our reference monitor), 2 sand bags. (from our buddy Abe)

From Alternative Rentals:

• 1x Fluid Head Tripod
• 1x Shure audio field mixer
• 2x C-stands. They don’t actually rent these out. We just figured they had to have some and we asked nicely.

With the exception of the stuff from Alternative Rentals, all the other equipments is pretty old and makeshift. No need to spend a lot of money. We had no idea what we were shooting when we gathered the equipment up, and Neil and I refused to spend any more than necessary on a what was undoubtedly going to be a very rushed and possibly shitty movie. To bad we had to rent the tripod though. Going hand-held and POV, we’re never going to need it.

The actors show up. I give them scripts. For the next few hours, the actors memorize lines and rehearse. The rest of us start lighting and dressing the set.

Being that it’s a store, the whole front wall is made up of large floor to ceiling windows. We don’t have duvetine, so we tape them over with heavy duty black trash bags. They don’t completely block out the light, but they do a good enough job, and we’re pretty certain that we’ll never be shooting in that direction.

We have no DP. All of our go-to people weren’t available, and we weren’t willing to hire one for this. Neil, Hannah, and I are going to be the cinematographers here. We’re not to thrilled about that, but since we’re shooting POV, the film will be a series of long, continuous shots. Editing will be a cinch, and the setups will be minimal.

That’s good thing cause it literally takes us hours to dress the set and light the first setup. Which isn’t a huge deal cause the actors are rehearsing and memorizing the entire time.

Our story could easily have been done as a 5 minute long continuous shot, which would have been really cool in many ways, but, seeing as how the actors only have a limited amount of time to memorize and rehearse, I’ve written in “breaks” – points where we can cut the action and move onto another take, to be spliced together in editing.

By 2pm we’ve set up lights, rehearsed, and eaten lunch, and we’re ready to go. Damian tells me that he’s gotta be out by 7:30 to go to work.

Goddammit.

It’s okay though. We’re rehearsed. This really should go pretty quickly now that the actors are solid. We literally need to shoot no coverage. Only 3 scenes over 2 physical setups. It’s all about the camerawork and performance now.

Now the sound mixer doesn’t work.

If we were too lackadaisical about this whole project, one way it showed was in how we didn’t fully test the equipment beforehand. I had done a full camera test two nights before and Hannah had gotten a chance to mess around with it on the previous night, but we never actually hooked up and tested the Shure mixer.

Rickmond can’t get the mixer to stop distorting and blowing out the sound. Neil futzes with it, but to no avail. It’s 2:30pm at this point, and we still haven’t shot anything. I give them 5 minutes to fix it, and then we simply toss the Shure aside and plug the boom mic directly into the camera.

This means that now were are now not using the two pieces of equipment that we actually paid to rent. Sheesh.

Either way, the sound seems to work now, but now we can’t modulate the volume during the screaming scenes. Ah well.

We finally start shooting. I have several key moments that I want the actors to hit, and key camera movements that I want Hannah to hit, but aside from that, I let them play. We’re set up. We can do this a million times.

Oh wait, we can’t. Damian has to be out by 7:30.

Still it’s going well. As the camera op in a POV piece, Hannah becomes the 4th actor in the scene, and has a great time with it. I give her a lot of leeway with the camera and occasionally adjust her to make sure that her movements are adequately motivated.

I used Damian in the previous film that Neil and I did. I know a crapload of young Asian American actors in their 20s-30s. It’s nice to have a middle-aged Italian guy that I can throw in there every once in awhile. He’s fun to work with.

I’ve worked with Vivian and Tim for years, mainly in theater, and I know what to do with them both. Vivian is crazy but endearing, and Tim is a good combo of 6’+ rico-suave and high school nerd. For instance, I don’t know when the last time was that he dated, but 90% of his MySpace friends are hot chicks.

Just like in our old theater company days, I found it easier to write these roles knowing whom I was writing them for.

I also know that these guys will pick up on their shit really quick. I don’t mind working with less experienced actors, just as long as I have the time to do it. Sometimes it feels more like teaching a class than directing. If we’re on a 72 hour schedule, I want actors that will get their shit memorized pronto and understand my directions the first time around.

Tim’s character is named “Aaron”. Vivian’s is “Kristina”. Why? Because the costume designer on Neil’s last project was named Erin Tanaka, and she had a sister named Krystina Lei. Basically, I couldn’t initially think of names for these characters so this was good enough for me.

Neil’s ex-girlfriend, coincidentally, is also named Kristina. He bemoans the fact that this film and its totally flipped-out crazy Kristina character will probably ruin his chances of ever getting back together with her. Whatever. Man up, Neil.

Damian’s character is simply “Priest”. I wasn’t going to waste any caffeine in trying to give him a name.

Once we start playing, the day is a blast. We’re cracking up the entire time. The script isn’t fully “haha” funny, but the whole storyline is so weird and ridiculous that we’re seriously thinking, “Okay, we’re either going to be one of the top 3 films with this one, or AAFilmLabs is going to ask us to never submit anything to them again.” It’s a great feeling.

We move onto the second setup. We’re riding the wire, but we’re doing alright on time before Damian is out. This scene is shorter than the other two, but involves some choreography craziness (a fight/scuffle), and a good deal of our time is spent fine tuning the actions and the camera movements.

I find another way to “break” the scene, right after Damian’s Priest dies (he died in our last film too - we’ve decided that we’re going to try killing him in every film we put him in) and the camera/POV goes to the floor. It’s 7:30 and I’m considering asking Damian to please stay 5 minutes longer when I realize that we’re both wearing jeans and dark sneakers. I’m wearing a brown t-shirt and he’s wearing a brown jacket. I had wanted to get a shot of Damian’s dead body on the ground in the last shot, but now I’ll just fill in and do it instead.

Funny, I had a cameo in our last film as a dead body as well. I’m primarily an actor, but all I seem to do in my own films is lie motionless on the ground.

We release Damian, thank him profusely, and we finish off the scene with me filling in for the dead body. Once I’m out of the scene, it’s actually kinda funny listening to the rest of the crew trying to direct the shot. Funny, but frustrating. I’ve really gotta learn how to be clearer about expressing what I want when I’m not actively directly a scene through a monitor.

We try one shot where a pool of blood slowly creeps into view of the camera/POV which is now on the ground on it’s side (is it Elizabeth Ong’s blood, or one of the other characters?) It fails miserably. We didn’t water down the syrupy fake blood enough so it just kinda spreads and stops in a very strange, sudden way. Unfortunately we can’t do this over and over again for fear of staining the floor. This is a great location and we’d like for Rickmond’s wife, Aiko, to allow us to shoot there again in the future.

We make due with the substandard pool of blood and we’re done at that location.

Now we have a film in the can, but the script actually has one more scene left to shoot - the first scene of the film, actually. It’s a “prologue” scene where Tim is seemingly talking to himself while looking into the trunk of a car (and we later realize that it’s Elizabeth Ong in the trunk.)

We sneak the shot at a UCLA parking lot with Naoya’s Accord, and a single China ball. Hint: the elevators in the UCLA parking structures each have a single electrical outlet.

We treat the cast and crew to a Mexican dinner at Poquito Mas, and send them on their merry way. Neil and I head back to my place.

Now we could sleep, but we decide to edit. I wanna have a rough of this thing done before I turn in for the night.

We’re pretty happy with what we’ve got. Neil can’t stop talking shit about how it’s only been about 32 hours and we’re almost done with the film. Man, that sure does come back and bite us in the ass later.

We have about 40 minutes of footage, but a very simple editing job. Still it takes us longer than we predicted. I don’t go to sleep until 4am.

At that point, in the past 44 hours, I have gotten 4 hours of sleep.

Still working on my next installment of the 72 Hour Film Shootout. It’s actually written. Unfortunately, it’s also long and boring. I’ll post it when it’s readable.

In the meantime:

I just saw Transformers tonight at the Mann Village. Don’t read any further if you don’t want to hit the spoilers.
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Okay, so it was a very cool movie with awesome action sequences. However, it got to the point where any scene without a robot in it became almost unbearable.

Most of what drove me nuts was the fact that Michael Bay and friends make absolutely no effort to fill plot holes. The thing is, the movie was, on all other accounts, pretty damn good. But there was so much stupid shit in there that I almost couldn’t enjoy myself at points.

See, you don’t actually even have to do that much work. Just do a night of brainstorming and tweak the enormous, glaring problems in a script so that they become only minor problems. That alone will make me happy. For this reason alone I am a big fan of James Cameron and John McTiernan movies - because at least they do that much (along with directing awesome action sequences.)

Anyhow, here’s what gets my goat:

• The goal of the heroes is to secure the “AllSpark”, an artifact of immense powers - one of which is the ability to turn ordinary machines into Transformers. Unfortunately, all the AllSpark seems to be able to create are new enraged, violent Deceptacons of various sizes and shapes. Why the hell do the Autobots want this thing so badly again? So that they can keep it around and live in constant fear that their washing machines may suddenly flip out and attack them? They spend a good chunk of the movie trying to secure and defend this thing instead of destroying it right away like any intelligent alien robot would normally do.
• So by the grand finale of the movie, by which point it has been established that there are at least a few flying and extremely lethal Deceptacons in the area (one of whom, Megatron, is the baddest of them all), what is the grand Autobot plan? To send the fleshy kid (Sam, played by Shia LeBeouf) to the top of some building with the AllSpark to get picked up by escape helicopters which will, no doubt, be instantly vaporized by one of the 3 flying Deceptacons that are swarming the area?
• For a guy who used to direct 30 second commercials, Michael Bay seems curiously unable to keep any of his movies under 2 hours. Considering the inordinate amount of chatter and pratter in the movie (really started to annoy the shit out of me), Transformers could have easily lost a good 45 minutes, and been a better movie because of it.
• What the fuck was up with Jon Voight? Very odd performance. And John Turturro? Was his schtick supposed to be funny? It was just weird and out of place.
• Seriously, does Michael Bay hate actors that much?
• Also, does Michael Bay have any non-white friends? Anyone in his movies that even has a tan seems to become an instant stereotype. A Latino soldier gets shit on for speaking too much Spanish all the time. A stereotypical Indian call center guy pops up at an odd moment. Some of the rednecks in the audience laughed but it wasn’t funny enough to me to justify adding to a 2 hour 20 minute runtime. And Michael Bay always seems to need to have at least one black character in each movie doing their crazy black thing. In Armageddon, it’s Eddie Griffin. In Transformers, it’s Anthony Anderson. In Bad Boys, hell, he’s got two of ‘em.

Over the weekend, some very mean, nasty robber men broke into my apartment and told me that I would have to choose between my beloved parrot, Ed O’Neill, and my beloved, brand new iPhone.
I totally flipped out and killed them all with my bare hands, so everything’s cool now, but seriously I think I would have chosen the iPhone.
 
I’m still writing my 72 Hour Film Shootout journal, but in the meantime:

The iPhone came out this past Friday. After seeing the lines at the local Cingular and Apple Stores, I didn’t even bother trying to get one.

On Saturday morning, Mike G calls me.

“Dave, they have 4-gig iPhones at the 3rd Street Apple Store.”

By lunchtime we were both walking down the 3rd Street Promenade with very pretty little iPhone bags. I really wished that Apple hadn’t given us these pretty little iPhone bags. They practically begged for the carrier to receive an ass-beating and a thorough robbing.

Engadget did a massive review. I agree with some parts and not others. Here’s my mini-review:

I’m an Apple fan and shareholder, but not an absolute blind loyalist (at least by my own reckoning.) It was a struggle for me to live through Apple’s G4 years, and despite what anyone says, I firmly believe that the AppleTV is a crap product.

That being said, I think the iPhone is a benchmark product in Apple’s history. It’s just a really, really well designed piece of machinery. Is it perfect? No, but it’s future potential is enormous, even in its current incarnation.

-Design: It looks like my old Sony Clie PDA, which I was always very fond of.

-Interface: Amazing. A perfect blend of futuristic efficiency mixed with real-world familiarity. Try scrolling through your contact sheet or a web page. It gets the job done, but with the comforting illusion of seemingly real-world physics.

-Battery life: For the first two days, I noticed myself running out of battery power by the end of the day, if not much earlier. Of course, I was using the thing pretty much non-stop and spending my nights jealously guarding it and hiding it from the world at large.

However, I’ve found that when I’m doing mainly phone use (ie, leaving the phone on standby and just making calls) the battery goes a long, long way. What really kills the battery is when I’m using wi-fi instead of EDGE, and dicking around with all the features, such as video, web-browsing, email, etc. Those higher end functions hit the power supply much harder.

For the past 2 days, I’ve finally chilled out on futzing with this thing every minute of the day. Today I did moderate mail, web, and google maps and made the usual number of phone calls, and my battery meter looks like it’s at 90%. Very impressive.

-Visual Voice Mail is very cool, very useful, and I can’t believe it took this long for someone to come up with the idea. However, when testing, sometimes I get my messages pretty quick, and sometimes it takes an unusually long time. I figure this is an AT&T issue.

-Keyboard: I’m still getting used to the keyboard. The autocorrection works amazingly well, but I don’t like the fact that I need to rely on it. Safari Widescreen typing (a la Sidekick style) is problem free, but you can’t currently type this way when making notes and sending SMS messages. Walt Mossberg says to give it a week, but I do miss the tactile feel of my Treo keyboard. I hope a future software update enables widescreen keyboard for all apps.

-Half-baked Bluetooth: I have a Jabra BT500 which worked flawlessly with my old phones. If it was within range of my phone it hooked up and worked. Now I easily paired it with my new iPhone, and it seems to work alright, but I tend to leave my headset in the car, and when I go away and come back to it, the iPhone will detect it and see it as paired, but will not automatically start routing calls back to it. Currently, everytime I come back to my car, I have to manually re-pair the headset to the iPhone.

Granted, the “hands-free” cell phone driving law doesn’t take effect until July 1st 2008, but still, this worked for me last week on my old phone. I’d like for it to work now.

Also, no bluetooth syncing!!! Only cable syncing.

I understand how bluetooth may not have the bandwidth to transfer gigs of music and videos, but it should be able to easily handle contacts and calendar events. This is one big feature that I miss. Hopefully Apple will remedy this in a future software update.

 
I’m coming off a Verizon Treo650, which I was actually very fond of. I’ll say this right now: The iPhone does not currently match up feature-wise with the Treo. With the exception of Visual Voice mail, the Treo currently does everything the iPhone does and more. Much more, in fact. The Treo supports MMS and video recording, which the iPhone currently does not. The Treo also has a much more feature filled calendar application than the iPhone and better business email options (albeit through 3rd party software).

However, for the most part, whatever the iPhone does that the Treo also does, the iPhone does much better.

At this time I will say that feature-wise and in a purely practical sense, the Treo may possibly be better than the iPhone. However, a few promised software updates from Apple should change that real quick.

I recently messed around with a korean phone and a Korean mp3 player and aside from marvelling at their functionality, I also marvelled at how frigging complicated they were to use. This is because Korea is a nation of techno-geeks that will soon give birth to a generation of cyborg babies. The Koreans are a race of people that speak in 1s and 0s and probably thoroughly memorize their instruction manuals before even picking up a product.

Americans, on the other hand, are fleshy morons. We need things to be a simple as possible. That’s where Apple’s interface team comes in. In some ways, I like to think of Apple products as well designed children’s movies. Sure they’re for kids and simpletons, but if they’re done right, grown-ups can enjoy them too.

 
This is a long post. If you’re not interested in filmmaking, or 72 hour film shootouts, or not interested in me, Dave, as a person, then you may want to skip this and go eat Crisco or something.

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We’re in the Asian American Film Lab’s 4th Annual 72 Hour Film Shootout (Team HEAD ON [apply directly to the forehead]). This means that we had 72 hours to write, shoot, and edit a 5 minute short film on a theme that we found out on the AAfilmLab website at 5pm PST this past Friday.
 

I spend most of Friday at work hoping to get my shit done so that I can cut out early and help my producer, Neil, pick up last minute supplies for the weekend, but my co-workers seem hell bent on making sure that their computers require my personal assistance.

At 3pm, I just leave. That’s the kind of leeway that comes with working at the same place for 7 years and only ever asking for a raise once.

I run errands with Neil and at 5pm we check the website for this year’s 72 Hour Film Shootout Theme:

Elizabeth Ong is missing.

- but wait, there’s more:

Elizabeth Ong’s absence is essential to your story

Elizabeth Ong does not visually appear in your film

Elizabeth Ong has a connection with characters in your film

Okay…were the past themes this particular?

Now since I’m an actor, I’ve been seeing a few casting notices around LA for different teams that are prepping for this contest. I get this impression that some of these teams are pre-planning their ideas. These casting notices seemed to be pretty specific on details.

I’ve also seen some of the films from previous years, and I’ll be damned if some of those films also weren’t pre-planned. A few of the films I saw simply inserted the theme or mentioned it, then moved on. Many times, that year’s theme never had anything to do with the core story or film.

This is why I’m actually thrilled at this year’s theme (and the included caveats.) I think it’s a brilliant way to crack down on pre-planning.

See the thing is this: If you’re so intent on pre-planning your film, why bother entering a 72 hour contest in the first place? Why not just produce it like a normal film and do it right? Is it because of the contest aspect of the 72 hour film fest? There are plenty of film festivals and, in particular, short-film festivals all over the country that offer competition and prizes.

Now we’ve never participated in one of these before, but from what I see already, a 72 hour film shootout is unique in that everyone is working under the gun. It’s appropriately fun stress. It’s fun to see how everyone interprets a common theme, and it’s especially fun to see the occasional, brilliant, specific, clever interpretation of an idea - the type of interpretation that cannot come by simply applying a theme to a pre-planned idea.

Now I appreciate the virtues of good pre-planning and pre-visualization. Neil and I produced a short film before. It cost thousands of dollars and took 6 days to shoot. For both of us it was our first short film of this scope and budget. We were both green as hell, but it was funner than a sonuvabitch, and there was an appropriate amount of stress that came with it. It was one of the most rewarding and educational things we’ve ever done, and we can’t wait to do it again, especially now that we know what we’re doing (or, at least, have a better idea of it.)

But a 72 hour film shootout? This is purely fun. Aside from pulling together the resources and manpower beforehand, I didn’t have to waste brainpower thinking about it in the week before the contest started. If our idea/film was good, then great! If it turned out to be average, then whatever. At least we tried and we got a bit of a “workout”. If our film turned out to be absolutely atrocious, then we just wouldn’t submit it and we’d turn our phones off and go into hiding. But we would not pre-plan. That completely defeats the purpose of why we’re both doing this instead of just producing a normal film (which we plan on doing in a few months anyway).

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Elizabeth Ong Is Missing
 
We start brainstorming.
 

We do not want to do something obvious, like:

“Elizabeth Ong said she’d be home at 7pm, but she is not here. Oh no. She is missing.”

Neil says, “What if Elizabeth Ong is a dog? And the whole film it seems like we’re looking for a person, but really, we find out that it’s about a lost dog?” Hmmm…interesting. Let’s keep that one in mind.

I call Mike G, our resident playwright. He is in NY at the moment, workshopping his new play. Out of all our friends, Mike G has the biggest forehead, and thus, the biggest brain. This probably contributes to the fact that he has the biggest writing ability out of all of us as well. He also has the biggester use of adjectives then I do, which is why he’s such a good writer, and I write not dumb try.

Mike picks up, and the first thing he suggests: “What if Elizabeth Ong is a dog?” Hmmm…well, if Mike thinks so…

We keep brainstorming. Can’t come up with anything. Maybe the dog idea isn’t so bad.

Naoya, our AD, and Rickmond, our sound guy, come over to help brainstorm. Naoya brings beer. Good man, Naoya.

First thing Naoya says, “What if Elizabeth Ong is a dog? And we think everyone is looking for a person, but really…”

hahahahahaha no. Nope nope no.

Fuck that idea. I can already tell you right now that there are probably 5 other teams throughout the country that are writing scripts about a dog named Elizabeth Ong that ran away from home, and how it’s the cleverest play on the rules evar. No.

Still, we don’t have an idea. Suddenly the story about Elizabeth Ong not being home by 7pm is sounding mighty good.

In the real world, it’s getting close to 10pm, and we still have no idea. I start drinking Naoya’s beers.

Now I was in a creative writing class with Rickmond back as an undergrad at UCLA, and I remember when he used to be quite the quality short story writer. Somewhere along the way, he decided that he didn’t like being mainstream, or linear, or even just normal and he’s kinda stayed that way ever since. Whatever. It’s not so surprising. He’s a musician.

Rickmond hates rules. Mainly because they’re rules. You could give Rickmond a 20 dollar bill and make a rule that he has to go buy himself nice things, and he’d probably wipe his ass with Andrew Jackson’s face just to spite the rule.

So Rickmond is coming up with crazy ideas. Plays on words. How can we get around these rules? “Elizabeth Ong is missing…a bracelet!” “Elizabeth Ong is missing…the bus!” I shoot him down, but still…it’s got us thinking.

Neil, meanwhile, is fixated on some idea that involves lesbianism. He got on that idea pretty early on and every fifteen minutes he brings it up again. I shoot him down as well. Over and over.

On my end, I’m thinking about details already. Every time an idea comes up I start considering possibilities, execution - How would we do this? What could we do with this? Does this give us any other ideas?

We go through our resources. We have 3 actors - Tim, Vivian, and Damian (Asian guy, Asian girl, middle-aged Italian guy.) We have access to several locations - 3 apartments, a large house (though it’s far away in Orange County), an office (mine), and Rickmond’s wife’s clothing store, currently under renovation.

Still, nada. Zilch. Nothing at least that I’m excited about.

Rickmond *does* have me thinking though. The rules are very specific and set very clear boundaries, unlike previous years’ competitions. When the boundaries are this clear, it’s cool if you can find a chink in the wall. Finding that hole gives the same satisfaction that Hogan’s Heroes must have felt. AAFilmLab is our Colonel Klink.

Somewhere along the way, while racking my brain about details and execution, I get an idea. Or at least I think it was me. Actually I don’t care. I’m taking credit for it anyway:

What if we shot the whole movie in POV (Point-of-View)?

That way we we’d be able to get around the rules which seem intent on preventing Elizabeth Ong from becoming an active character within the story (and also preventing the “Elizabeth Ong” mantle from being placed upon a pre-existing, pre-planned character.)

By doing this, Elizabeth Ong does not “visually appear” in our film.

Okay, how about the “missing” aspect and how her absence is essential to the story?

Simple: She’s been kidnapped. Sweet!

“Elizabeth Ong has a connection with characters in your film”

Oh she will. I’m not worried about that rule.

Awesome! We’re going with this!

Okay…so why is she kidnapped?

Here’s where we hit another snag. We run through idea after idea after idea. Neil starts trying to slip the lesbianism back into the story, but I whack him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and give him a firm “No!”

But it’s Neil that comes up with the final idea: A crazy stalker (our actor Tim) has kidnapped Elizabeth Ong to force her to marry him.

There’s something so kooky and specific about that idea, and there are possibilities. I don’t know what they are, but in my gut, I know that there are possibilities with that idea if we are shooting this POV. We decide to go with it. We don’t waste any time questioning *why* Neil would think up of such a thing and we move on to the other actors.

Damian can be the priest that Tim’s character has also kidnapped to perform the ceremony.

So what about Vivian? Vivian is a female friend of Tim’s that is so completely, unhealthily in love with him that she actually helps him with the kidnappings. The kicker - she’s helping Tim “marry” the same woman that he’s obsessed/in love with, and it’s killing her. Vivian’s character will end up being the best character in the film, in sheer narrative weight.

It’s 11pm and we contact the actors. They’ve been waiting for us to call. We tell them to meet at Rickmond’s wife’s shop tomorrow at 11am. We’ll have script for them then.

We brainstorm for another hour. It helps a little, but really, I just need to sit and write this. Rickmond and Naoya leave at midnight (or 1AM?) and I start writing. Neil stays up for a little, but soon passes out on the couch.

I’m tired. I drink a Red Bull. I write till about 4-4:30am. A lot of this time is spent staring at the screen and muttering to myself, punctuated by periods of actual typing. But mostly staring at the screen and muttering to myself.

I finish a draft and wake up Neil. Neil, who has been sleeping during the 4 hours that I’ve been working, takes a look at the script and gives me several suggestions. My knee-jerk, gut reaction to his suggestions is to throw my laptop at him and scream about how maybe he should just write his own goddam script about lesbians, but instead I just take his suggestions and incorporate them into the script.

When all is said and done, it’s 5AM. The actor call time is in 6 hours. Neil and I agree to wake at 9am to account for time and take care of last minutes before we get to set. Four hours of sleep for me.

Click here to read Part II…

A bunch of us are teaming up to tackle the 72 Hour Film Shootout this weekend. 72 hours to write, plan, produce, and edit a short film.

Will let you know how it goes…