From the abyss, you seem like the brightest glow up there.
2nd
Shortening 17 years
Taking the idea from this post, I list here an unordered selection of nontrivial facts regarding the last 17 years of my life (1994-2011).
- Screwed up at least four relationships;
- got a MsC degree;
- established three companies;
- visited four continents (yes, me too); :)
- became father;
- wrote and directed a short film
…and I still listen to Drake too much.
Déjà Vu
The website of Déjà Vu, my first short film, is online!
Here, I don’t have anything to add to that. :)
Simple hints for novice directors
I’m not a real film director but life is strange and I have written, produced and directed a very short film – we’re still editing it, I’ll keep you informed about its next step. :)
There is a lot of good advice on the Internet: let me add here a few naive hints. :)
- I had just one day to shoot so I previously wrote a detailed script and created many tables that group takes (with their length and the like) in scenes, scenes in sets etc.: it won’t be enough but it helps. Of course, during the day, I changed things – and their order – a few times but a film is a project, right? Your film crew is like a team (twelve people in my case) and I’m an engineer in real life so being a producer/director is not that far from being a project manager. :) I supposed that eleven hours would have been enough: I was wrong. It took fifteen hours, and you can’t stop the sun, of course. :) But we completed what I had planned: imagine what would have happened without a good schedule.
- Even a simple make-up requires more than half an hour for an actress and a few minutes less for an actor: that’s a lot of time that you have to count in your time table. The setting up of the camera and the sound take time too but these are easy to understand.
- Special effects: that’s post production, of course, but try to keep the number of VFXs as low as possible.
- Find a good cinematographer: he helped me more than what I’d have expected from a DOP… being smart, fast and creative is essential. :) Your two arms are, first, the DOP and, later, the Editor. :)
- The story is the core but a good camera, lights, location and many other things can make the difference: they are not cheap but if you want to try to be admitted to some festival around the world, even if you are not a real producer, I’m sorry but you have to spend a bit of money. :)
Then, don’t forget a few rules taken from a previous post. :)
36 hours
- four flights;
- an interview for a TV channel;
- a speech during a street protest;
- another interview, in English, for a Swiss German newspaper;
- one more video interview for a web channel;
- a talk in a conference;
- a bunch of new friends and an incredible ghost town, among other things. :)
Turning back a mother into a woman in five easy steps
Unfortunately, such a book doesn’t exist so I’ve added a fake cover on the O’Reilly Maker Series: it’s one of the most missing manuals for new fathers. :)
Filminute 2011 critics
Filminute is the International One-Minute Film Festival and for its 2011 edition, I’ve got a deal with them: writing twentyfive short but tweet sized reviews, one for each candidate.
I’ve watched all of them: the quality clearly increased since the previous edition. It has been hard to choose a candidate to vote for… and I suppose it’d be even harder to join them next year. :)
My rules to find my candidate are:
- Be humble: don’t try to do things your budget can’t afford.
- Be original: don’t use third-party works; plot/sound/music/dialogues/whatever must be yours.
- Be impressive: writing, directing and editing are the core of Filminute.
- (optional) Show me a bit of love: violence is not surprising anymore.
These are the reviews:
- Adventure Girls III. It’s a great candidate but a lot of blood is not easy to get and, due to Sailor Moon, it failed my 2nd rule.
- Aftermathematics. Perhaps it’s me but I didn’t get it and I didn’t like it either. The last take is too long too.
- At the Opera. That one made me cry. Its music has a problem with my 2nd rule but I can close an eye. Two puns, sorry. :)
- Bunny vs. The sweet iron cat. Did they really use Times New Roman? I’m too old for these 3D animations or the like. :)
- Cara o Sello. The girls are pretty but the first take is too dark and the noise of the coin doesn’t follow its twisting.
- Chit Chat: the more I watch it, the more I like it and that’s even true for its yin-yang brunette. :)
- Dans l’ombre: frankly, I didn’t understand the reason of this French “hommage” to M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder.
- Dot in the line is a funny short: there are joggers in the background at its 48th second… additional turtles there? :)
- Evil weed: that’s what violence is… inseparable from civilization as we know it; we can even imagine it in plants.
- Family portrait is the long take I like most: no dialogues, no music, just the saturated air of a daily horror. Great.
- Foolproof has the best title and credits design. The light on the man is so different and the voice is a little too fast.
- Garbage: after the well-known trunk shot, at its 38th second we have something closer to a… dumpster shot, indeed! :)
- Grassy Knoll Edge: two dudes on a riverside are brainstorming about movies… until “pet porn” comes to their mind. Deal! :)
- Hamburgz: a surreal story with a very interesting way of telling it. The music literally drives this filminute. Bravo. :)
- Honfoglalas: I liked a couple of takes of the cars and their wheels but, unfortunately, that’s it.
- Level 13. A monster lives in a UK multi-floor parking deck: is it a long-term drawback of a wrong-side driving country? :)
- Loop has tricks of all kind: many of us think it’s the beast to beat. That’s for sure a Top 5 candidate.
- Masks and mirrors is definitely a candidate that showed me some love, as I was asking for: we have a great Dad here.
- Naufrago: a seashore wave puts on the sand a bottle of wine and a castaway with a corkscrew finds it. What a lucky day! :)
- Never thought has an original location and I felt like him many times. Though its usage is against my 2nd rule, Bach rocks. :)
- No man’s land has the greatest monologue of this edition and one of the best sound editing. The noise of a fly is a classy touch.
- Oblivion has 30 takes if I’m not wrong. I still can’t find any mistakes and I should learn from its mid-part editing.
- Rêverie. Very good idea. The smile of the girl at the 37th second is worth the filminute. I liked the little Ronaldinho too. :)
- The days before that. I think they used old tapes… being sly as foxes. :) That is a good idea but it failed my 2nd rule.
- The Fallen. Hat off. Its quality is something in between real movies and TV prods. Isn’t it closer to a trailer than a filminute?
My top 5 candidates, in alphabetic order, are:
- Hamburgz
- Loop
- Masks & Mirrors
- Oblivion
- Rêverie
It has been very hard to choose my winner: I used a single round-robin tournament within my top eight favourite films and while waiting for the official winner, I can announce that my winner is Rêverie. Congratulations to Jaro Minne. :)
On Yeti Tracks
A summer ruled by blue mood is not the right thing to turn me into a hungry reader so “On Yeti Tracks” is the only short novel I can write a few lines about. What I liked most of this pleasant typical Chatwin story, with his unique mix of searching and telling, was the beginning: from Sydney, he called his wife up in Boston, asking her “to meet me in Nepal”. Who of us could have such a call? And who has a wife ready to accept it?
Esegesi endomorfa
Il titolo del post dovrebbe essere ironico. :)
Uscito dall’Associazione Rientrodolce, per il suo Congresso telematico 2011 ho registrato il mio intervento in forma di audiovideo/screecast, nel quale discuto un mio post con alcune critiche a vari aspetti del pensiero di Zerzan e all’anarco-primitivismo in generale, rispetto a quanto appreso negli anni di studio in Rientrodolce.
Questo è il video su YouTube: chi ha l’occhio fine, noterà che lo screencast è stato registrato su Mac OS X; sono consapevole che Stallman potrebbe levarmi il saluto ma quella era la macchina disponibile al momento.
Closing the top posts list
After a few years of monthly updates, I stopped publishing the top posts list of this blog because it has been almost stable for many months so the following is the last one.
