The Running Free

- Coheed and Cambria

Ok, so a week off and not much change.

I've noticed that starting Genius lists with The Dear Hunter seems to give me near flawless lists every time. I get Coheed, Finch, Placebo, Silverchair, Tegan and Sara and loads of other great variety. So it may become my new modus operandi.

I did get a hold of the new Placebo disk and it is very forgettable. It's sad because a lot of their earlier stuff really had some awesome beats, lyrics and melodies. But both Meds and now Battle for the Sun seem just a little flat. The aggression that hallmarked their early works seems gone; and they seem desperate to get that old acidity but can't quite find it.

I may have a lead on some meaty full time work coming up here. While freelancing has treated me largely well, I'm ready for consistent work to keep my creative juices going. So fingers crossed on that one.

01. The Running Free (Acoustic) - Coheed and Cambria ( - )
02. Threesome - Fenix TX ( - )
03. He War - Cat Power (+3)
04. No World for Tomorrow - Coheed and Cambria (+3)
05. Y Control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs ( - )
06. Come Close (Acoustic) - Saosin (-3)
07. It's Nice to Know You Work Alone - Silversun Pickups (-3)
08. Ageless Beauty - Stars ( - )
09. Cheated Hearts - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (back)
10. Bitemarks and Bloodstains - Finch (new)

Knock off: Bury Your Head - Saosin, What it is to Burn - Finch

Start the Machine

- Angels and Airwaves

This is a little late, especially since I didn't see it openning weekend, but I did get a chance to take in The Hurt Locker and found it to be arguably the best film of the year.

That might be more of a knock on the films I've seen this year, than the quality of The Hurt Locker.

As a visual spectacle, few things come to the level of The Hurt Locker. The gritty, realistic, hand-held, but never too frantic, camera puts the audience in the company with three soldiers whose job is to take care of potential IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in Iraq. The 16mm film is sufficiently grainy when blown up on the big screen and adds a level of dirtiness to the whole film, but makes night shots look like they were shot in the thumb hole of a bowling ball. Director Kathryn Bigelow has always had a knack for telling these brutal stories visually, and The Hurt Locker may be her best yet.

The visuals, mixed with some very solid performances, allow the audience to get their own adrenaline high from the high tensions scenes that come at the audience with a frightening pace. While each scene may not be able to top the last, the film very much captures the day in day out of being in a contemporary war zone. It's not about small pushes by a variety of companies on the ground leading to a glorious final battle of epic proportions, it's the day in day out of always having one's life at risk from anything and everything.

But it's all down hill from here.

The characters are broad strokes that do too good of a job of standing in as various soldier types. You have the reckless cowboy whose life blood is being in the danger of the war zone, the by the books "You're too reckless, cowboy character!" foil, and the average kid that didn't know what he was getting into when he signed up for the war. The result is no actual characterization or investment in the characters. While it's tense to see them in life threatening situations, the audience learns from the first scene that if a character archetype dies, another will come in its place.

The arc of the story is highly predictable, leaving the obvious ending right in the audience's lap at the end with no apologies. This brazen embrace of the cliche leaves a bad after taste in what could otherwise be a really solid, inspiring film. The script seemed far too interesting in giving an authentic experience, writer Mark Boal was an embedded journalist with a bomb unit, than delivering a powerful film. There's a better happy medium to find.

Despite all of its flaws, I would still recommend The Hurt Locker, especially in the second summer in a row of disappointing blockbusters. Along with Up and Adventureland, it ranks as a film that actually touched me; which is apparently saying a lot this year.

Once Upon Your Dead Body

- Coheed and Cambria

I was away from my computer for almost all of last week having a fabulous time with my sister Kim and her husband Jason around town so my top ten is so similar this week it's not even worth posting. You'll see it back here next Friday.

In other news I've abandoned my high minded screenplay for an idea that I've tossed around to a handful of people and all of them seem to think it's pretty neat. It combines quantum physics with lucid dreaming and Jungian psychology. The story isn't 100% there yet, but once I have a good treatment, into Jason's in-box it's going in hopes we can get a first draft done before he heads back to school in September. I've written first drafts of screenplays in twenty some days, so I have confidence that the two of us can get it done in a bit over a month.

I'll still keep that high concept idea, which largely came to me when using a common house hold item, on the back burner. I think there's a story to wrap around that nugget of philosophy on the American Dream.

I'm also thinking more and more about a documentary. I have more apt equipment for a documentary than a narrative film and my credentials (over a dozen photojournalism awards) more lend themselves to the work. As I've been looking for a new project for a couple of weeks now with little success, I may have to make my own opportunities. While I'm writing I'll be hot on the heels of funding oppertunities for docs. With so many non-profits, think tanks, lobby groups and politicians right in my city I am in a pretty unique experience to hit up pretty much any subject I can think of.

Coming up with that subject, that's the tough thing. But I've got a couple of things in mind. This media obsessed brain must be good for something, right?

The Running Free

- Coheed and Cambria

I've added a new status for fun. When a track has (back) on it that means it was knocked off the previous week, but this week it's back on the charts. I'm not going to bother looking further than a week back, mostly because I'm lazy.

Not much to report music wise this week, as the lack of movement in the top ten shows. The one newbie, Ageless Beauty, shows that song's hold on me. You might remember when I first started giving my weekly top 10 that Ageless Beauty owned like every week the whole time.

In order to make these more exciting I've been thinking of resetting my play counts back to zero at the end of every week so that it is a true top 10 list for the week rather than my overall top 10 as reported each week.

Meh, we'll see.

01. The Running Free (Acoustic) - Coheed and Cambria ( - )
02. Threesome - Fenix TX ( - )
03. Come Close (Acoustic) - Saosin ( - )
04. It's Nice to Know You Work Alone - Silversun Pickups ( - )
05. Y Control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (+2)
06. He War - Cat Power (-1)
07. No World for Tomorrow - Coheed and Cambria (-1)
08. Ageless Beauty - Stars (new)
09. What it is to Burn - Finch (-1)
10. Bury Your Head - Saosin (back)

The Running Free

- Coheed and Cambria

It'll probably be at least another week or two before the Dear Hunter starts making an appearance on this list, but rest assured they are getting more than their fair share of my listening time these days. Other than that, it's largely a shuffling of the tacks that seem to be making most of the chart. The Silversun Pickups are finally wanning a little bit. I hope I didn't wear them out, I find myself trying to listen to Swoon and not even finishing the first track before switching back to The Dear Hunter.

But that might just be my current obsession trumping.

Happy Fourth of July to all of you fellow Americans. We've got a lot of problems, but the best part about what we do is that we don't need a revolution or coup to change it; and that's really swell.

01. The Running Free (Acoustic) - Coheed and Cambria ( - )
02. Threesome - Fenix TX (+1)
03. Come Close (Acoustic) - Saosin (+2)
04. It's Nice to Know You Work Alone - Silversun Pickups (-2)
05. He War - Cat Power (-1)
06. No World for Tomorrow - Coheed and Cambria (new)
07. Y Control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (new)
08. What it is to Burn - Finch ( - )
09. ...All the Go Inbetweens - Silversun Pickups (-3)
10. Cheated Hearts - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (-3)

Knocked off: Bury Your Head - Saosin, The Royal We - Silversun Pickups

Welcome Home

- Coheed and Cambria

Hey there, blog. It's been a while, hasn't it? With principle photography finished on Hard to be Me I'm back in it and need to get my writing juices rocking again. I've got two ideas for feature length screenplays bouncing around in my brain that I want to work with other people on, and my resume has been flying around all over the place as I look for something to keep me busy aside from my day job. I think it might be time for a bulleted update on my life in general:

Hard to Be Me: Like I said, we wrapped principle photography on Saturday. We still have some pick up shots to get in a week and a half, but they aren't anything that I wouldn't have normally left in the hands of a second unit (if we had one). All the same they need to get done and look good, so there is that. The post production schedule is set and I am hoping to have a trailer or promo clip to show to you all by the end of August. Production stills and some other fun stuff may come earlier.

The production has become a cardinal experience for me in many ways. It was my first production to go from no budget or student film to ultra low budget. I worked with some true professionals that have some great credits to their names, awesome actors whose credits include big name films and the luxury of being just a director (and not also Producer). It was also the longest production I've been a part of too, helping me bridge the gap between feature length and short. Overall, it is a great "next step" in my professional experience and I am extremely grateful to be a part of it all and to have all the faith that was placed in me by everyone else on set.

Overall I see massive potential in the footage and I am cautiously optimistic that this becomes more than just a great experience and a good bullet point on the resume. I've treated this shoot like it could be my last; I realized that if all I do is think about "the next one" that there may never be a next one. And especially a "next one" that's just as good as the current one. I think too many people in this industry get obsessed with how their current project can be leveraged into something on the horizon; I made sure to pour myself into this shoot.

Screenwriting: As I mentioned I have two feature lengths in mind that I want to fast track to the top of my list. To me Inheriting the Mushroom Kingdom is too derivative and like so many other pictures, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth is too unlikely to help me at this point in my career and Sidd is too artsy. In an attempt to be both marketable and unique, I really brain stormed for a while and have two concepts, one of which I wrote a treatment for, the other I'm still in the concept stage.

I've recruited my brother in law, Jason Kopplin, for the latter. He wrote a fantastic script for the failed Stop That Nun sitcom Confab and is generally a skilled writer whose experiences and taste vary enough from mine to add new dimension, but are close enough that we can still work together. It's high concept, with the thesis coming before the story. It's always scary to work that way, as the story should be the primary mover. But I trust us to make the story the center piece while keeping the thesis intact.

For the former I'm still up in the air on if I should fly solo or bring someone else on to. It's definitely marketable, and in the new "guy flick" genre of Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith. A romantic comedy that is done for the male audience rather than the female one. This appears to be my strong suit if past works like Microcosm are any indication.

My other idea for a feature length is a bit zany, but I may go through with it. I was thinking of inviting three complete strangers to hang out with me over their lunch break once a week and we would try to hammer out a feature length. Just put some ads out on craigslist and some listservs and see who bites and what we could do. I've really come to the conclusion that this area is just inspiring and is bubbling over with talent. We should find a way to get it together.

All of these would probably be screenplay competition fodder or saved for possible future pitch sessions.

A New Short: As I begin to plug in to the film making community out here and start meeting more people, my thoughts turn toward making another short. I have seriously considered a proof of concept short, that is a short of something that could easily be adapted to feature length, or a scene or two from a feature length to show what I had in mind. There's a work that I'm strongly leaning toward adapting and unlike Coheed and Cambria, I feel I could actually get this work in the hands of the creator and get a straight yes or no from him. But money is tight and I doubt I could find much underwriting without anything to my name (for now). Still, I may write the script up and research it properly. That's the first step, then worrying.

Of course, The Protester, still sits on my harddrive aftere Stop That Nun failed to produce it. So there is that option as well.

Regardless, it would be on the DVX100a, unless another camera came at the same price point on to the set. I did really enjoy using the EX1 and the 35mm lens adapters for Hard to be Me, but the price tag is too much for me right now. And maybe that just means a short is not in the cards for me at all right now. However, working with prime lenses was not that fun for me. As a French New Wave junky, a jerky zoom on sticks is sometimes exactly what the doctor ordered. Something on film would be amazing, but now I'm really getting ahead of myself.

Piles of Resumes: I've sent out my resume to a lot of calls for directors, editors and writers in hopes of something sticking for other people's projects. So far I've had limited success on that front, one interview for which I declined the job, but hopefully more is coming as people get to my e-mail in the pile they've no doubt received.

So I'm not as busy as I would like any more, but I must admit that having this weekend off is quite liberating. Knowing that I don't have to be on set is a huge relief and the feeling of accomplishment from putting a project largely in the can can't be beat.