Archive for the 'Movies' Category

A change… Some thoughts

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on August 12, 2008
in Movies and future
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First, I’ve decided to re-institute the daily Twitter digest.  So, every day, you can have my 140 character little thoughts as they flow from me five or six at a time.  If you don’t like it… too bad. :D

Second, yesterday, I helped Jerry shoot Dustin’s short that will be shown at the KIFF in September.  It was another one of those shoots where I didn’t feel very useful, but in actuality, I know that I was.  I mean, boom mics can’t hold themselves up and dip into frame.

I think I am a lot like Jerry, I really need to be in control of everything to really feel like I accomplished something.  Regardless, the shoot went off the whole day without any major hitches in its getalong.  We got all the major elements of the story even while making some slight changes here and there.  Our two main actresses were absosmurfly phenomenal.  They knocked their roles right out of the park and were extremely patient when many others were getting impatient after multiple takes, or if they were getting frustrated with us, it didn’t show.  Some things in the script were just not quite possible with the resources and time we had.  This time we had an actual DP where I was, once again, the 1st AD, a role, at which, I need to improve.  One thing I know I need to do is actually learn the names of those I’m working with.  Of course, there was a time very close to the shoot that I almost wasn’t able to make it, but I suppose that’s not really an excuse.

I don’t care what anyone says, Wikipedia is an awesome resource for a lot of things.

Hopefully the final project will be put up on Vimeo rather than YouTube.  I really like how well Vimeo treats the source material, like a peg that fits snugly into place.  Whereas YouTube smashes the video with a steel mallet until it comes out as a twisted, terrible facsimile of its former self.  Nope, not biased.

On a semi-related note, Kelsey, my sister-in-law, may very well have a future as a makeup artist for our future projects if we can get her.  What she did with some acryllic paint was awesome, I just wish it wasn’t water-soluble.  The cut mark she painted looked very real from where I was standing on Dustin’s sink.  You read that right.  It did wash/wipe off halfway through the first take, but that’s the paint’s, the water’s, and the towel’s fault, not her’s.

Btw, if you want a red color in a bath to stay, try not to have the drain open.

Well, I need to get to bed.  You have a good night and a good day.

A whole lot of TV… in the new

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on July 6, 2008
in Interesting, Media, Movies, Technology and Television
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Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of TV shows.  Shows like 30 Rock, Eureka, The Office.  A whole heaping helping of shows that I’ve been told are good, but just haven’t watched for one reason or another.

Turns out that I really like them.  So, I decided that instead of watching them on a TV or getting the DVDs from Netflix, I would just watch them on my HTPC.  The first three seasons of The Office, I watched on Netflix’s Instant Player and the fourth, I watched on Hulu.com.  The first season of 30 Rock, I watched on Netflix and bought and downloaded the second season from Amazon Unbox.  I got the first season of Eureka from Amazon Unbox and am working on it as I type.

So, how many of you are slowly or even quickly moving to an Internet-based television experience?

If you could pay $2 per episode for all of the shows that you watch on a regular basis, would it be more expensive or cheaper than what you are paying now for cable or satellite service?  What would you think about a system like that?  Would HD be a must?  Should HD content be more expensive or the same?

Personally, I would love a system like that and I think that it would be less expensive than what we are paying now for satellite, but truthishly, I haven’t crunched the numbers.  I think that HD content should be the same price as standard def content.  Nowadays, every major TV show is shot in HD and then conformed to the old SD standards, so there isn’t any extra work needed to produce HD.  I think there is just this feeling of “privilege” that is surrounding and staining the true, blu potential of HD content.

Yep, that missing ‘e’ was intentional.  That’s for you, Kody.  ;)

It’s been a long time

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on July 4, 2008
in Apple, Media, Movies and Work
. Comments

Finally, Lexy and I are on our own.  We have our own place in Lee’s Summit, MO.  We have all the essentials set up: TV, internet, and video game consoles.  Our internet is via AT&T’s 3Mbps DSL service.  We don’t have to have a landline and it’s only $30 a month.  I’m kinda digging that.

We have not at all unpacked.

My new job is not that bad.  Working and selling for Apple is fairly easy.

I also get to go to Gulf Shores, Alabama for vacation.  I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.

I want to thank all of you who helped us move.

Here is the short that won us the One Night Stand 10 hour film competition:

My Passion. The Second Surge.

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on June 5, 2008
in Media, Movies, Rambling, Technology and future
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Ok, so that title is a bit… suggestive.  Get over it.

Last night, I attended another meeting of the Independent Film Makers Coalition, aka IFC.  This is the organization that hosted the One Night Stand 10 Hour Film competition.  There was some drama the competition screening and last night seemed to be “talk shit about people behind their back” night.  I wasn’t impressed with the lack of professionalism of many of the IFC Board members.  The guy resigned, let it go.

Anyway, the big piece of awesome I got to hang out with last night was a RED One.  This is a 4K camera.  That means it has an active resolution of 4520 x 2540 pixels.  Compare that to the highest HD signal you can get on your TV at 1920 x 1080.  I think I just saw some of your eyes glaze over.  Here, look at this:

Screen resolution size comparison.

That 4k there?  That is where the RED One sits compared to 1080p.  Look how much bigger that image is, it is absolutely astounding!  I actually got to stand next to this machine and talk to the guy who owns TWO of them.  He is currently in the process of shooting a feature this is about to become the only two RED shoot in the Midwest.  That is just too cool.  He said that just the body runs $17,500 and when you get all the  lenses, power, and storage accessories, you are looking at a total setup camera of around $40,000.  Now, I understand that is a LOT of money, but look at it another way.  Other cameras that aren’t even capable of what the RED can do, run around $250,000.

Then, at NAB this year, RED introduced the RED Scarlet.  A 3k camera that will run around $3,000.  It will include a lot of stuff that will allow it to come out of the box ready.  The Scarlet doesn’t have as big of a sensor in it, but it does have a damn big one.

The RED One has a sensor in it the same size as a piece of Super 35mm film.  That means you get image characteristics that are extremely similar to film.  This is awesome because you get the same depth of field as you are used to with million dollar film cameras and the image quality is astounding.  The monitor that comes as an accessory for the RED One is a little 8″ LCD that outputs 720p.  At screen sizes that small you cannot tell the difference between 720p and the higher resolutions, so it gives you a damn fine example of what your footage looks like.

The guy, Steve Pruet (sp?), is such an amazing guy.  He is shooting and funding a feature out of his own pocket.  He has dropped over $250,000 on just equipment for the project and that includes two RED Ones.  He showed some of his footage last night and even on a standard definition DVD outputted to a crappy projector, the footage was absolutely gorgeous.  The amount of detail capable of a 4k image will just blow your mind.

Really, the thing that is grabbing me is that 3k Scarlet.  Once you are done getting all the accessories for it, you will be out around $7-8,000.  That is NOT at all bad.  That is a similar price to a Canon or Sony HD prosumer camera by itself and those aren’t capable of a 3k image.  The Scarlet will completely change independent film, I have no doubt of that.

I know that I threw a lot of jargon around and many of you are lost.  A 4k image is huge, but when you output your project, you are most likely going to output to a 2k master.  This means that you are throwing away a lot of pixels, but this also means that you can digitally, on a computer, zoom in and not loose and detail.  Taking a 4k image and mastering to 2k gives you so many options when it comes to editing, that you can do things on computer that wouldn’t be able to do in the field.  That is the real beauty of a large image camera like the RED, aside from the crystal clear image and the jaw-dropping depth of field.

Enough film geek for ya?

My Passion. It’s back!

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on June 2, 2008
in Movies and Projects
. Comments

Over the weekend, most of you know, I was part of a 10 hour film competition.  I was Assistant Director for a friend of mine, Jerry.  The short film was writen, directed, and shot by Jerry himself.  He busted his ass all damn day and through his hard work, we pumped out a damn fine short film called The Plan.  Eventually, when he gets around to it, the film will be put up on the ‘net and I should be getting it on DVD.  Those of you who haven’t seen it yet, you will, I assure you.

Here’s the deal.  The film had to have three characteristics in it.  The first was a fan.  This could be anything from a ceiling fan to a sports fan.  It just needed to be in the film in some fashion.  The second was a director.  A film of a dead director had to be inserted into or as a line of dialogue.  The director chosen was Billy Wilder and we inserted Sunset Blvd. into our film.  The last was a theme.  The theme chosen was “an act of charity.”  This theme turned out to be the only one that we had to work a good bit to get to work.  I won’t tell you because it is kind of the end of the film.

Those three things were given to us the day of.  We showed up at the Wesport Coffe House in KCMO, signed in, were given these, and were set out to make our film.  Let me stress this: our film was shot, edited, and authored to DVD in a little under 10 hours.  Even overcoming bad sound, broken mics, our actress leaving early, shooting out of order, importing video with dropped frames, and re-engineering our squib, we kicked ass.  Jerry led the team extremely well and dealt with everything with a cool head.

Personally, I didn’t really see myself doing a whole lot during the shoot.  I’ve said this a lot, as a few of you can attest.  I swear, I am NOT trying to get sympathy or whatever when I say this.  I was planning on keeping track of our shots, timecodes, all that.  I didn’t, but to be fair, it didn’t end up mattering.  We imported the footage into the machine in large lumps.  Not my editing style, but obviously, it worked for Jerry.

This weekend got to me.  I really enjoyed being a part of this project, but it also made me realize something.  I don’t have access to nearly the resources that Jerry did.  He had access to a Canon GL2, a good camera if used properly.  He had several friends who are actors, which helped a lot and resulted in a good, well performing cast.

My next challenge is to figure out how I am going to schedule work, school, and any future projects.  The weekend showed me that working on a film project like this is an amazing experience.  Now, I need to put together a regular team I can work with.  A group of people that wouldn’t mind working on my projects as long as I help them with any projects they have.

I really need to get my own equipment.  That is a lot of money to spend, though.  A LOT.

Oh God, My Childhood!

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on May 29, 2008
in Movies, Opinion, Rambling and Sad
. Comments

So I’ve been thinking about my childhood recently.  Really because the first dog I had is being put to sleep tomorrow.  Super sad.

Then I started thinking about all the new movies that are just remaking or continuing my childhood.  First, let us talk about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  This is probably the best of the recent childhood rehashings.  It wasn’t the best of the Indy movies by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a fun movie.  As a continuation of my childhood memories, it did a fairly good job, but it definitely didn’t match up to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  So at this point, my memories of childhood are doing ok, still alive.

Then we come to the hardest hit portions of my childhood: Star Wars.  The original trilogy was one of the greatest movie memories I’ve had.  Since then, they have been among my favorite films and I really geeked out on them.  Then the prequels were released.  When I saw Episode 1, for a while, I tricked myself into believing it was a good movie.  Eventually, I had to face the facts and admit, it sucked hard.  Episodes 2 and 3 raised the bar a little with each movie, but never to the levels of vision and ingenuity shown in the original three.  Once Revenge of the Sith ended, I was hoping that the Clone War saga was put to a close and the Star Wars franchise could just die in peace, with what little dignity it had left.  That is what George Lucas did to his own series, he murdered it in cold blood.

Now, to exhume the body and presumably rape the corpse, is Star Wars: The Clone Wars.  The story to link together the stories of Episodes 2 and 3.  Just the last bit of shit to make sure that the Star Wars fans are completely pissed off and the series is wholly and completely trashed.  Don’t get me wrong, I will go see it, but I will NOT be waiting in line on release day.  I have seen what George Lucas has done to his much loved series and I am not excited about what’s coming.  Maybe I will be shown wrong and it will be a good production, but my expectations are so low, they can’t really be called expectations.

The last thing that I will talk about is Back to the Future.  This was another trilogy that was so well made and just enraptured me as a child.  The movies wove together so well and were excellently delivered by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd (among others), they also stand in my favorite movies below Star Wars and Indiana Jones (respectively from great to slightly less great).  Thankfully, the rumors of a fourth BttF movie were squashed and it will not be in production.  You can’t grasp how happy this makes me.  The series finished itself at the end of the third movie and everything was wrapped up all nice and tight.

Why do there need to be remakes and re-imaginings of movies that were just fine the way they were?  If you want to bring the movie to a newer audience, let them watch the original.  Let them figure out that if weren’t for these original classics, the stories we know and love today wouldn’t be around.  Please, let the old stories lay in peace.  They don’t need to be rehashed, reimagined, redone, recovered, rewhatevered.  There are so many creative people out there with so many great ideas and skills, give them a chance.  Throw some money to the independent film makers instead of $200 million dollars to remake and fuck up a movie that was just fine the first time.  Creative and original stories are the way to go.

Sony and Blu-Ray Sittin’ in a Tree

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on May 15, 2008
in Media, Movies, Technology and future
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I’m not sure that title joke is actually appropriate seeing as Sony is the parent of Blu-Ray… meh.

So, Sony is sitting pretty with Blu-Ray being the one HD format to rule them all.  Until THIS! (dun-dun-dun)  Pretty much saying that Blu-Ray players aren’t moving and most consumers who didn’t get in during “the war”, still won’t get in on Blu-Ray.  Really, I’m not surprised.  Blu-Ray (BR) players are still up around $300.  DVD didn’t REALLY become popular until you could get a player for around $100.  I think those 35% with HDTVs are waiting for the prices to come down.  Sony or other BR manufacturers, however, don’t feel the need to bring those prices on players or media down because, dammit, they won and they are going to milk this tit as long as they can.

BR is a fantastic format, don’t get me wrong.  I love the crap out of it and my PS3 is a great DVD/BR player.  Though, the interesting thing is that the PS3 is adhering to more of the BR standards than the standalone players are, without being the best BR player available.  You are hard-pressed to find a BD player that supports BD 2.0 or BD Live.  Then when you do, you are looking to shell out $3-400 on it.  Not appetizing when you look at the actual movies running around $35 at BestBuy.  Though, admittedly, if you shop around, you can get new BR discs for close to the same price as new DVDs.

Sony is shooting itself in the foot and bleeding all over the consumer.  They are grossed out and kind of confused.  If the media becomes cheaper, more accessible to the consumer, I think Sony will start putting some gauze on that ugly bullet wound.  BR will eventually explode and replace DVD, but right now the consumer is confused, doesn’t really know the difference between BR and DVD, and is scared off by the high prices of all things BR.  HD specs are full of numbers and letters they never had to deal with before.  1080p through HDMI and all that.  Those of us who can follow and understand the jumble are okay and loving our BR players.

Once prices come down, if they come down, BR will start moving.  The first hurdle for the format is HDTVs.  The second, the format war, which is still scaring consumers for some reason.  The final is price.  Once all three of these are leaped, BR will become a giant and we will look at DVD the same we do VHS now.

Lets not talk about digital downloads.  Let’s suffice to say that the majority of consumers still want to hold a piece of plastic in their hands to show they bought something.  Also, the HD quality on downloads doesn’t come close to that on BR.  That may change, but I think the tangible product will keep winning for several years to come.

I’ve had my piece.  Now, you, Disqus.  Heh.  Reference to the new comment system I re-implemented.

The Worst April Fool’s Joke Ever.

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on April 4, 2008
in Funny, Movies, Sad and Video Games
. Comments

I a HUGE Legend of Zelda fan and this video is one of the worst, makes me wanna cry April Fool’s jokes I have ever been witness to.  Personally, if done right, I think it would be an awesome idea.

Some helpful sites

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on March 10, 2008
in Books, Home, Media, Movies and Video Games
. Comments

I found a couple of sites that I find helpful in keeping my daily life organized.

The first is Shelfari. This site is fantastic for keeping track of your books. You can add books to your library, discuss books with friends or really anyone, even customize which edition of a book you have. The only thing that I wish it had was the ability to keep track of what books you loan to who. If this site is interesting, add me as a friend.

The second site, was shown to me by Kody. This is DVDSpot. This site is to keep track of your collection of DVDs. It also has Blu-Ray and HD DVD titles in case you own any of those. This allows you to keep track of movies you own, you’ve seen, you want to own, you have ordered, but haven’t received yet, etc. You can even keep track of what DVDs you loan out to what people. I found that entering your DVD collection in by UPC number was by far the easiest over trying to figure out which version of a title I had. I did have to do this with a couple of my DVDs, but really the database this site has is very expansive. I was actually surprised by a couple of them. If you use this, friend me up or just check out my collection.

Finally, I am using Gamespot.com for my library of video games. It is a little awkward to use for a game library, but it is also where I get a lot of my game reviews and is generally the final nail in deciding whether I buy a game before I play it.

I would definitely welcome any better suggestions for the sites I have suggested, especially for games.

Oh, and for any Mario Kart fans out there, the release date apparently has been set at May 1, 2008.

Movies and more

Published
by
Anthony Thompson
on February 29, 2008
in Movies
. Comments

therewillbeblood_poster.jpgLast night Lexy and I went to see There Will Be Blood. First, I will say that this movie is now on my list of fucked up movies. Fucked up in a good way.

There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis in an Oscar-winning role, is about an oil prospector in the early 1900s and his quest for a particular town in order to drill. The movie revolves around the main character Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) and his son H.W. Daniel competes with other, larger oil companies and attempts to strike it rich with some almost-forgotten land and tries to broker a deal to build a pipeline in order to avoid railroad shipping costs. The drama is generated from an accident during drilling and the ultra-religious church in the town he is drilling around. I won’t go too much into the story, as the movie really speaks for itself.

Daniel Day-Lewis is, by all accounts, the greatest actor of our time. His ability to capture the essence of a character and make it flow onto the screen is absolutely amazing and There Will Be Blood is no exception to his abilities. The rest of the movie is also excellently performed and adds a degree of realism and stunning that I don’t think I’ve seen matched in any other recent film. That is not to say that I don’t have my issues with this film. My biggest problem is that there were several times that the audio clipped (was too loud for the speakers). Now, I can account this to being in a theater stuck in the back of the 20-plex (we were in theater 18), so that is not the movie’s fault. The music direction was… interesting. It could be rather distracting and quickly pulled me out of the experience of the movie at least a couple times. In a lot of the more intense moments, it was more along the lines of an audio cacophony rather than music, but more often than not, the style of music worked for the scenes.

There Will Be Blood is definitely a movie that everyone should see. The life and wonder generated around these characters and this world is so fascinating that it completely enthralled and captured me. Very good, very interesting movie. Completely recommend. Too bad its Blu-Ray life is still up in the air with the recent death of HD DVD.

In other movie news a new, full Iron Man trailer was just released on MySpace. The awesome part is that even though I don’t have a MySpace account, I can still embed the trailer here. Muahaha. This is one of my most looked-forward to movies of the year. Maybe ever. I have always been a huge fan of Iron Man and the idea of Robert Downey Jr. playing Tony Stark just blew me away. It was a perfect choice. How could he mess that role up? He can’t, that’s how. Maybe this should be a good time to start reading some Iron Man. Yeah, even though I have been a fan of Iron Man, I haven’t read any of the the comics. I just never had the money or the access to a good comic store. Oh well, I’ll figure it out and grab a few collection books or trades as they are called, I think.

I swear, I watched this trailer like five times. Gonna be awesome.