The end made me laugh out loud (not just lol, seriously laugh out loud) from sheer smacked-by-cleverness-ity.

This is tight.

Here’s a link to a higher-rez QT for those scoring at home.

Showbiz Pizza Fan Site
Showbiz Pizza Wikipedia entry

What is The History of America according to MK12? Cowboys vs. Astronauts, bitches.

And the detail? Check out this still:

- How fucking funny is that? Answer: really

The psuedo-rotoscope, greenscreeny+line drawing and digital watercolor animation technique is nothing new for MK12; THOA aesthetic is very reminiscent (no, directly reminiscent) of their 2003 Hot Hot Heat “No Not Now” video, complete with a nod to the bunny costume characters.

Still, this is dope-ass animation at it’s best - a large, well thought out moving painting if you will, and that’s cool. In many ways, THOA allows MK12 show they are the dominate force in their craft without reigning in the details of what their craft really is. Broadcast design, animation, modeling, production technique, sound design? Sure. But THOA shows off much more than technical skill including a hilarious pop-historical, pop-political take on America. Though the plot is completely ludicrous, the story is eerily familiar and 100% sensical to anyone succumb to American public education in the last 35 years.

The short can be viewed in its entirety, here: go fast before it gets yanked (not supposed to be available yet due to acceptance into Sundance ‘09 Shorts Program). Let me know if this gets pulled and I’ll hook you up with the .mp4 - its apparent MK12 would like it that way.

All photos by Kristine.

Oh, the caveat?

There were a bunch of crappy looking digital films released in 2007.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the move to digital acquisition is cool, but not if the films look like they were “shot with a digital camera that makes everything look like it’s being viewed through a bug-spattered windshield”.

I guess in some ways the move to using digital cameras for non-indie films has allowed medium/highly funded producers to believe hiring a competent DP was pointless. “The cameras are digital! It’s easy!”

I thought about making a comprehensive list of biggish-time films shot digitally but looked terrible. That list is out there; maybe someone else will write it, but for now, here are a few examples:

- Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead trailer - come on Sidney!
- Starting Out In The Evening trailer - puke
- Fay Grim trailer - most of Magnolia’s/HDNet Films releases suffer from bad cinematography
- Slipstream trailer - yuck for the cinematography, and double yuck for the “plot”
- The Lookout clip - right after this clip (peep the DVD), the film turns to terrible, DV quality REZ for the final bank shootout. Um, what? Why?
- Zodiac, though I did enjoy the color grading, was even unimpressive. I particularly remember some scenes in the dinner toward the end looking horrendous.

One digitally shot film released in 2007 that looks fabulous is Reign Over Me. Shot with the Panavision Genisis, cinematographer Russ Alsobrook and his crew had the city street night shots dialed in. Generally, it is the naturally lit nighttime scenes which expose digital acquisition weaknesses, but Reign doesn’t falter for a second.

The movie itself? Not bad. Found the “love interest” quite annoying to the point of undermining the rest of the moral.

But for what it’s worth, Reign features some brilliant filmmaking, including the editing which worked quite well given the tasty visuals.

—

Anyone catch the name of Liv Tyler’s character?

LeeLoo needs a bath.

< < watch > >

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What Camera Did You Use to Shoot 1080 24?
Nikon D-80. It’s a prosumer still camera body, 10+ megapixels, very ergonomic. In this lineup Canon has the 30d and Sony has a new one called the Alpha. I had experience with the Nikon D-70 and stayed with the D-80 b/c I like how it fits my hands - makes me want to pick it up (which is important, if you’re a camera). The Canon 30d is also a very fine camera, a bit more expensive, but very very sweet.

Lenses?
Both spots shot with Nikon’s 18-135mm zoom. It’s a very slow lens (f4+), but zoom was important for a couple of reasons (more in a bit). I’m still working on my lens collection, continually trolling ebay (this is where things can get expensive).

Did You Shoot RAW, or What?
I hardly ever shoot RAW format. Little, if any, of my stuff goes to large format printing, and I personally don’t find the increased detail editing controls with RAW all that much better than shooting hi-rez JPEG. RAW is definitely better, but not that much better, IMHO. If I’m editing photos, I usually have 40+ open at a time and with RAW, that’s just silly. This is personal preference and that’s just how I work.

Using RAW stills for a motion/broadcast/film spot is cool too, but it depends on your final output. For me, I knew MY final output would be HD, and the CLIENT’S final output was web, so shooting RAW here was a bit overkill.

For the sake of speed and efficiency, I actually shot the spots at about 1K resolution. 700+ stills uncompressed at 10MP apiece is A LOT to ask of even of best desktop ‘puter and knowing final output resolution was negligible, I just thought this was the way to go. Saved a bunch of drive space, too.

For a BIG shoot with a BIG budget or even somone besides my alias editor Stump Blanketship driving FCP, I may have thought about shooting RAW, but for Stump’s sake I made it real simple (well, relatively simple. Stump is a damn fine editor - I’m lucky to have him).

How’d You Do It?
The stop-motion?

Yes.
Stop-motion is easier than you may think; it’s really a patience game.

For the “Bad Dates” spot, I had some really nice visuals to work with and a nicely lit set piece, so I just set up shop there. I had already written out the VO and had a rough storyboard in my head so the goal was just to match the shoe action with the pace of the script.

Moving the shoes around is simply that, move a bit at a time, snap, move, snap, move. For this process, I HIGHLY recommend a loyal assistant, or at the very least, a SHUTTER REMOTE.

For the “Fences” spot, there were no specified props or characters to work with, so my goal was to make a baseball field come alive.

The hardest part of the spot was finding a nice looking field that would let me shoot there, and I landed the 2nd nicest field in Portland, at the U. of Portland (PGE Park - the minor league team’s field - was cordial, but this didn’t fit into their opening week festivities. I can’t imagine why; perhaps a “location fee” would have helped. Mmm, next spot’s budget….).

Yeah but, How Did You Move the Field Around?
That was the trick, instead of moving the field, I moved the camera - position of, and tripod head axis (pan/tilt), and ZOOM - sometimes all at once (in little increments). That was really fun; I had a good time in the sun shooting the baseball field pix.

Again, I showed up to the field, alone, with only an idea of what I wanted. The fun part was figuring that out on the fly, as I had an hour to myself.

You Don’t Storyboard?
Not for my own devices. I storyboard when a client needs to see ‘em, or when I can’t already see it in my head, or I make lil’ stick figure ones if only to show the rest of a crew. It’s hard to effectively storyboard when the location variables are not already on-lock (urban term), and plus, for me, I like the organic challenge of directing on the fly. It’s like a live, moving painting that you’re in charge of - at least that’s how directing feels to me. Non-storyboarding doesn’t mean ill-prepared, just that I like making decisions after I see things come together visually, in real life, in real time, in the moment.

DP Rodger Deakins has a great line, with a very sly smirk on his face, in the extra features of House of Sand and Fog where he pokes fun at director Vadim Perelman for showing up to the set with an intricate book of storyboards. Deakins basically says something to the effect of “I made him throw them out”, which is funny because in the moment of having the actors and crew and everything on set you just know you’ll see something better than you did with a pen and paper (special effects laden, SCI-FI epics excluded from that statement).

Enough With The Storyboarding, What are You the Storyboarding Master Or Something?
No, I’m not, sorry to run on that tangent.

It’s Okay. I Left The Subject of This Email Querry Somwhat Vague and You Went With It.
Wanna see the spot?

Yes.

That’s Pretty Cool. You Do The Color Pass in After Effects?
Thanks and no. I…er…Stump shies away from AE as much as possibly b/c he’s much better with the color tool in FCP, and it’s much faster than importing and exporting files a bunch of times. AE is sweet but - HE - did a bunch of AE work some years ago and prefers to let the motion graphics artists stick to AE while he works inside FCP. No doubt Apple’s COLOR has him very stoked.

Wow! Thanks For The Reponse! I Think I’mma Try Shooting Stop-mo Too!
You’re welcome, thanks for writing. You should go shoot some stop-mo - it’s fun; bring your patience.

Any Other Tips?
Can’t say it enough - camera remote.

Awesome. If I think of anything else, I’ll post something in the comments.
R A D , Y O .

The West Side IS THE NEW MODEL. Model for what? The model for DIY content creation, creativity, and distribution. The West Side is a banging new “serialized internet novel”, presented for free on the internet as 12 episodes. The brain children behind The West Side are hella-made NoFilmSchool scribe Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and co-writer/director/producer Zachary Lieberman. And I haven’t even got to the best part yet; The West Side is an urban western and it’s off-the-chain S T Y L I E.

No doubt, this concept would have made a great low budget feature, but without any budget to speak of, RBK and ZL took matters into their own hands. It’s a film, it’s a “podcast”, it’s an episodic, it’s a series. It’s feature length, in portions.

It’s B O S S (fuck the Boss).

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The great thing about The West Side (besides looking fantastic) is that it’s professional; no one’s going to be crying about being $100K in credit card debt at the end of the series.

In other words, there’s no Film Festival trying-so-hard-to-be-hip mentality behind it. RELEASE IT. NOW. AS FAST AS WE CAN.

Susan Buice and Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters, for all the press and “accolades” they received, are just now - two years post-date - releasing their film for free, to the internet.

And if I can Dennis Miller this for a second, why - why - why - why did Buice and Crumley not make FEM available on DVD the second their podcasts were featured all over the net? Really? Everyone into indie film/the net was watching the FEM brand explode, and yet the creators sat - SAT - on their greatest potential revenue source FOR TWO YEARS, only now to show up in my email inbox looking very sad at having spent one-hundred thousand dollars navel gazing, buying ironic t-shirts (size small), traveling to 20 film festivals, and begging for traditional distribution.

Think I’m wrong? Bullshit. FEM has been HAILED by the just as wanna-be-hip InterWebPress/Traditional Press as the “new model of Indie distribution”. To that I say, really? The model for DIY, self reliant, harnessing the web, blazing new trails, no/low budget “indie” filmaking/distribution is….

1.) Seek traditional distribution deals (and their collective cash) first…..
2.) Complain when said distribution deals for your self-made reality-TV (OOOPs I mean) reality-FILM driven movie don’t come in
3.) Spend WAAAAYYY TOO MUCH MONEY while continuing to seek traditional distribution
4.) Move back in with your parents
5.) Release your film on the internet for free anyway

…?

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The West Side says FUCK ALL THAT. Let’s skip to the release part, then see where it leads us. These guys making The West Side work real jobs, they’ve saved their money, they’re shooting nights and weekends, and they’re scheming as fast as they can.

And nowhere on their site do you see them pleading for a revenue stream to bail them out of poor financial decisions.

Na. The West Side is just about, art, and story, and having a badass time being creative. I hope these guys BLOW UP. They deserve it. This is a ballsy move on their part, creating a wonderful piece of art and entertainment, with no money, no backing, and giving it away for free. No doubt, getting 12 of these episodes out is going to be a chore with limited resources. This is exactly the kind of project that if I was a rich man, or even a semi-rich man with a bent for unique storytelling and possibly artistic development, I’d throw RBK and ZL $20K just too help them get through this production a little easier. Even with an in-kind grant such as that, they’d still halfta’ count on dedication and a whole lotta patience to pull this episodic feature off, but maybe the morning’s cereal would taste a bit better, knowing the milk isn’t bad and all.

Spielberg - Where you at on this, breh? Robert Rodriguez - Throw a bone these cat’s way.

RBK and ZL: either one of you guys Jewish?