Putting the final touches on my next article for a print issue of VIDEOMAKER MAGAZINE tonight, shortly after finalizing the next two Sonnyboo short films that will premiere next month at the COLONY FILM FESTIVAL. Your narrator feels substantially more "up" of late, although not at the lofty heights of days past, but still...
Next month I will be the keynote speaker at this film festival where I attended in 2006, screening HORRORS OF WAR when their name was the "River City Film Festival". Five years later, and I am doing a seminar on big shoots, little shoots. I'm going to show ACCIDENTAL ART along with some behind the scenes footage, showing the bigger crew and comparing it to the new CELL PHONE MONOLOGUES, where the crews maxed out at 4 people. I have no behind the scenes for these shoots because there was no room or time for extra people. My point will be to use the amount of crew you need for the project at hand, not small just to make it small and not big just to have more people to boss around.
I'm pretty happy with the outcome of these two shorts, one of which has taken over a year to complete. I wish I could lay blame on the 2 FX heavy shots, but alas that would be untrue. Procrastination and a changing attitude about HOW to complete movies. I am something more of a perfectionist than I was before. The last 5 years have greatly transformed my attitudes about quality over quantity. My process has proven to be more about watching and re-watching an edit and making changes. Rather than demo this in the public eye, I am more selective about who sees my edits and when.
I let ideas fester and grow before making decisions. This takes a lot longer, but the results are more polished and I am less likely to release something, then make George Lucasian re-edits for years to come.
