16mm Fever

Just a few to look at.

 

2010 Cinema Sports Event

Look, we made a film in 10  hours last weekend at the Mill Valley Film Festival’s cinema sports activity. The fantabulous kittykatcrew brings you “the art of looking”, a film made in 10 hours, shot in one small town, cut in a pizza restaurant (until we got kicked out) and a peet’s coffee shop… all from 3 main ingredients:

- waking from a dream
- eating food
- a laugh

producer: michele sieglitz (aka lilblackcat)
director: wilfred galila (aka violetspacekitty)
dp: matt rome (aka francisfordkittyla)
editor & talent: dana shaw (aka kittykutsalot)
sound: eric bell (aka shadowkitty)
light & graphics: jen g (aka kitty G)

The ElectroSonic Chamber Live Studio Experience

A visual explosion of music, film, digital mediums and storytelling have come together under the creative hood of Kwality Media headed by the vision of Dana A. Shaw. The ElectroSonic Chamber Live Studio Experience brings audiences a unique point of view behind the minds of a modern psychedelic folk band, The ElectroSonic Chamber. Watch as they record an original track titled ” Hang On” a song written by Wilfred Galila and The ElectroSonic Chamber.

Keeping It Reel

For the past 3 months I have been working on my new documentary film titled Keeping It Reel. To say the least I have had awesome encounters with several of San Francisco’s finest including film archivist Rick Prelinger of the Prelinger Archives , filmmaker Craig Baldwin from Other Cinema, film colorist John Carlson of Monaco Digital Film Labs and experimental film creator/titles and credits veteran Rock Ross of the New Nothing Cinema. I have had time to talk with them about their thoughts on how digital media is effecting filmmaking and why they are still attached to their preferred medium, in most cases celluloid film. With help from my fellow mates over at Kwality Media and some fellow Inner Richmond graphic designer Noah Charnow and creative specialist Brandon Moore, the film is coming to life with its own heart beating full of images that will be exposed on screen Spring 2011. This is better than kittens on Youtube and your weekly television drama addictions, so stay tuned for more information and updates as the production ripens over the next 6 months. (photos top to bottom: Myself interviewing Rick Prelinger, Craig Baldwin, DP Nico T. van den Berg posting up!) photography by Carl Sturgess & Nico T. van den Berg.

iPhone 3G,,,,Dropped calls!

Hey 3G iPhone users, getting tired of dropping important phone calls? Its long over due and it seems that the natives are becoming restless. Apple has been hit with a law suit over the flaky qualities of the iphone 3G and it hopes to go class action soon. “Jessica Alena Smithfiled the complaint yesterday against the iPhone maker, alleging that the new iPhone’s 3G performance and reliability has been subpar, despite the claims made by Apple’s aggressive marketing campaign.” - Jacqui Cheng

I have been fed up with the performance as well and for the past month have recorded eachphone call dropped and its time by snapping a screen shot of the image. Some times I witnessed 9 dropped calls in a row within 3 minutes or less. This is getting ridiculous so its time to fight back against AT&T and Apples monopolistic approach to controlling the mobile phone industry. Check out the photos of my missed calls at Blogerandi.

Heads or Tails, A Short Film.

First, let me begin by saying a few kind words about a good friend/associate. Dakota Wolffe Nicolucci, a fellow ginger, a man with a plan and most importantly a man with great passion for filmmaking. With that said, we have been taking a short media class together, where I had discussed our projects and class exercises in previous blog posts. Dakota wrote and directed a short film entitled Heads or Tails, where two strangers reveal that they are brothers through an interigation of strong will and intense conflict. I dont want to reveal what happens in the ending but I will say that it is quite funny in a dark humor sort of way. I was appointed to be the assistant director for the project and after rigorus pre-production and casting we finally got to shoot the project last weekend. I was picked up in the morning by Josh Watts, the lighting director, and we set out for Danville, Occupation “suburban nightmare”, however everyone in the town was really nice it just seemed to lack cultural diversity. None the less crew members Jaena Sta. Ana, Donnie McCormick, Teng Xiong Josh Watts, Dakota Nicolucci and myself locked ourselves in a friends garage to shoot the short film. With tempuratures reaching close to 100 inside the garage everyone pulled thier own wieght and we knocked out scenes like Mahammed Ali. Everyone did an excellent job which made being the Assistant Director a good time. the actors were very good and consistant with thier efforts and artform. I cant wait to post the final edit but I just had to give everyone credit for a successful shoot that finished early with all of our shots and more. A special thanks to Matt West and his friend Russel who let us use his garage for the making of Heads or Tails, Stay tuned next week for the finished cut of the short film.

The HIV Story Project Opens at Frameline Film Fest!

Currently I am captain of the freelance ship, I sit stern in my wooden chair and man the Mac Pro desk top computer control center! She is a trusty ship and gets me through to the safe harbor of deliverable.  I have been working on a number of projects but the most recent is creating titles and credits for The HIV Story Project, a mini-compilation of select short films from San Francisco Bay-Area Filmmakers. Headed by Producer Marc Smolowitz and Director Jörg Fockele, The HIV Story Project focuses on people living and thriving in the San Francisco Bay-Area and how they cope with thier illness creatively through personal expression and the human experience. I cannot share my work with everyone quite yet but if you would like to see my work on a big screen it will be shown at the Frameline Film Festival on June 17th – 30th, which is open to the public. This compilation of short films range from experimental animation, music videos, narrative shorts and the documentary genre. These films are all very creative and represent the strong will of people who stay positive through one of the most harmful illnesses in the world. We would love your support and heck, maybe you will learn something about the human experience. See you there!

Super 8, Super Holiday!

This past weekend was interesting to say the least, I have been working on my senior documentary film and it includes doing really awesome things like test shooting super 8-mm film. I sought out to test some Kodak Ektachrome 100D color reversal film and PlusX black and white 100 ASA reversal film, so I traveled to one of the best shops to buy it called Action Camera, located in the outer sunset district. I bought three cartridges and spent about fifty bucks and then realized I had spent 50 dollars on 7.5 minutes of time to shoot. Equating that with the cost of processing and transfer when all said and done I will have to spend a hundred dollars to be artful and creative. Brandon Moore, my creative director and long time friend took a bike ride to the beach and shot some interesting close ups of the beach binoculars, except we didn’t have ND filters so we were unable to capture the beautiful ocean scene. We quickly retreated to Fort Miley up the road and got covered by a winding path that led up to the top of the fort. The meter was happy with us and allowed us to shoot the rest of our black and white cartridge with ease.Next was the color reversal Ektachrome, I found myself shooting flowers, plants and wooded scenes that didnt make much sense yet it was very satisfying. I broke the promise to myself that I had made to never shoot flowers with film just because it was cool, but it really is cool and fun so I advise it. Later on that evening I felt sparked to bring the Super 8 camera with me to dinner at the Cliff House and I caught the last of the magic hour blazing on the beach with windsurfers in the choppy waters of Ocean Beach.I feel satisfied with my weekend yet Im still feeling a bit impatient to see the dailies so I went on to vimeo to get my fill of what well exposed Super 8 film would look like. Damn my digital blanket and my impatience with a process. 100 dollars later and not knowing what my footage looks like makes me a bit uneasy.

Iron Man 2 VFX

Origionally posted about by Justin Cone over at Motionographer. Being that our feature films can now be driven by motion graphics,  visual effects and other compositing work to make the story and elements in the frame go beyond the production set, people now are attending films just for that reason. This past year some of the most revolutionary films hit the box office including Avatar, Alice In Wonderland and of course Iron Man 2. With visual effects crews reaching larger populations than most third world countries these films are able to produce a unique vision of what our world would look like in the future. Currently with new Apple products integrating multitouch user interfaces, we can see that the influence from visionary filmmakers does have an impact on the technology that is in store for the next 10 years. Its not too far out of reach to think that one day we will be able to stand in the middle of our room and call up a slate of visuals to use as Robert Downey Jr’s character did  in Iron Man 2. Take a peek at what may be in store for us in the future with the VFX reel provided by Prologue. I cant wait!

Prologue Credits

Sequence Designers

Ilya Abulhanov
Paul Mitchell
Danny Yount

Executive Producer
Kyle Cooper

VFX Supervisor/Producer
Ian Dawson

VFX Associate Producer
Elizabeth Newman

VFX Coordinator
John Campuzano

Technical Directors
Jose Ortiz
Miles Lauridsen

Design
Clarisa Valdez
Chris Sanchez

Animators
Alasdair Wilson
Jorge Alameida
Troy Barsness
Kevin Clarke
Morris May
Darren Sumich
Jonny Sidlo
Takayuki Sato
Kyung Park
Joey Park
Alvaro Segura
Man Louk Chin
Daniel Kloehn

Compositors
Chad Buehler
Christopher DeCristo
Sam Edwards
Christopher Moore
Brett Reyenger
Matt Trivan
Renee Tymn

A Digital Filmmakers Memoirs

As I had mentioned I was working on a short last week that we shot in 1 day and edited in 2 days. This script is inspired by conversations people have that tend to be ambiguous and is dedicated to my friend Stewart Durst, since he is the one whom I had this conversation with on an interesting hike at Tory Pines State Park in Del Mar, CA. Dont get me wrong these are not professional actors nor was this a huge production. This is a short film shot by 4 people and the actors are my fellow filmmaker friends Carl Sturgess and Josh Watts.  We shot this as a class project for a short media production course where the emphasis of the  project was to work on blocking and orienting the viewer in a 3 dimensional space. I hope you like it.