Your Art / Films / Writing / etc.

[Brutus]

If you have any work you've done that you'd like to share you can do so in this topic. In the past people have posted their work on here but usually in something like the topic for videos, where it gets kind of lost. There are also a few scattered older topics about this sort of thing, but they're not so clear.

Ah, so I'll begin now by posting this picture of a bear which I drew a couple of days ago and then went over with watercolours (which I bought a while ago to make some of the incidental messy/splash images on the site). I like how it came out.

[Kalamazoo]

For what it's worth, I like that bear a lot.

Movies:
Hallelujah! Gorilla Revival


The Man with Apple-Shaped Boxing Gloves


Chuck & Nash III: Quarantine



Music:
3 Day Widower


Mary's Poisoned Pastries


Animal Folk Songs & Ballads

[joneshiro]

a couple years ago i made a couple issues of a magazine along with the girl i was living with. the end result has yielded plenty of mixed opinions.

for now, as the original run went "out of print" i've put the first issue up in a nifty rar file. high quality jpeg scans.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dz1mn1zzuxz

couple of image samples
http://oneshiro.blogspot.com/2008/02/qu ... -2005.html

they seem too big to try and hotlink here, and i'm too lazy to resize any of them right now...

[Jesus Son]

poster

&

trailer


(already posted in the video thread a few weeks back)

for Karaoke, the film i'm working on. 7 days left to finish it. shit...

[langley1986]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGhEc0b2T48
(already posted in the video thread a few weeks back)

for Karaoke, the film i'm working on. 7 days left to finish it. shit...

I would really like to see this. What's the status on it now? When you say finished in 7 days, does that mean it will be a completely finished final cut ?

I've already posted this before on here, but here is a very rough teaser for the film I've been working on for the last two years.

http://www.youtube.com/brandonlangley

Youtube compressed it like crazy, obviously ... so it doesn't look good.

I spent the weekend in South Carolina and North Carolina getting ADR dub work from three actors. As soon as my editor finished editing the ADR in, we will be completely finished with the film except for color correction and sound design.

I posted an ad in the East Tennessee Film Commission newsletter looking for professional sound design and color correction help. Now, I have like six offers for professional help on these two aspects. I have to choose who I'm going to work with mostly dependent on price since I'm working completely out of my pocket on this. But, after I get color correction and sound design finished, the movie will finally be complete. It should be done by the middle of September. Its about 2 hours 10 minutes long.

[umma-ohz]

Mr Langley, despite the low quality I think the trailer has a very strong sense of atmosphere which I find very important.
Would love to see it when you're finished.

[yourbuddyoz]

my music
http://www.myspace.com/thebrowmp

just a hobby. beekeeping is my first passion

[Brutus]

What about writing? I am curious especially about whether any of you write screenplays and how that goes. Of course for these these films you would have written a screenplay of some fashion... I'd like to know how that goes for any of you. I know downward writes in general (he shared a few things elsewhere, I remember), but as for others I don't know.

I write a little myself. I have kept a folder of writing on a computer since I was seventeen or eighteen, I'd say. Generally I just fill up simple text files, adding ideas or lines whenever they come and then once I feel the file is getting too long I create another. A random sample from one ends up looking like this:

a king in exile. he says he only became obese in this state of living but that is untrue. he attempts to convince the others, who were deemed too loyal to him but in fact are not, to help him take back his kingdom. this is long talked about but never goes anywhere.

the exiled king takes up residency in a bear cave a short distance from the castle in which he previously dwelt - the bear having been killed when he was in power after it was seen in the woods. when in power he desired a mountain to be moved, it blocking a window view. men spent years hacking at it.

the mother who wore black
the mother wears black

later we will be heroes but nevertheless many of us will die

the poor are born without purpose, im giving them purpose, a reason to live, by antagonising them

in death, make sure they remember me as a great one. i had goals that were for the good of others. i died young and i was beautiful.

the white of whites

its an intangible quality that we have and that all other races lack

in the modern workplace a woman works
as a steel worker
if she wants

On and on like they go, pages upon pages. At times I sit and write at length too. I have attempted at times to write short stories and novels but none of that has ever gone anywhere significant - I always seem to lose interest in carrying on after a point.

Recently I decided to commit myself to a feature-length screenplay competition, that has gone better than anything, due perhaps to the deadline and something else in the air - I've written perhaps 1/3 of a screenplay now and I hope to complete the rest by the end of the week in order to meet the submission date. It has been a lot of fun writing for this but at times it is tough - sometimes everything looks shit and hopeless and other times it feels everything is coming together nicely.

I have just four days to go now. I feel I'll complete it somehow in spite of the great amount still to be written - my tummy hints at an affirmative with good certainty today... I will sit down to properly write again in a moment.

So I am curious about how anyone else here has gone with screenwriting, to go back to the question. I'd very much like to hear about any of your experiences.

[harris]

I write music and movie reviews for my college newspaper and also pieces for a local arts website:
http://www.poorpony.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=44&Itemid=115

Some of my paper reviews are posted there. I just got a job at the city paper doing proofreading and layout. I really like writing and it comes natural. I realize that some of the pieces seem a little dumbed down and that is because there is both a 500 word limit and an audience of which 75% only likes CMT country music.

[langley1986]

This is what happened when I wrote my screenplay for my feature.

I had just bits and pieces written down in multiple notepads. I had the general whole story figured out as well. But, I could never get motivated to actually write it all out in correct screenplay format. Then, my director of photography told me of a Chrysler screenplay contest for a $1,000,000 budget. I knew that I wouldn't win the contest, but it gave me a great reason to get motivated and write it all out in screenplay format.

But, the deadline was like 3 or 4 days after he told me about the contest. So, I wrote the whole screenplay in these three days. The script was 126 pages in proper format. I just had my notes in notebooks and ideas from my head. That was a very rough three days. But, it was worth it because it gave me a good deadline to actually finish by.

I need a new deadline like that so that I can put my new movie "the kool-aid of the third reich of satanic panic" into a proper screenplay.

[RONSAUCE]

I hate writing. I think my interest in cinema comes partially from how much I hate reading and writing. I do write scripts but I never show them to the actors. I only really show them to my producer and other members of the production. I use scripts more for logistics and strategizing films. Really just so that other people can visualize the film. I'll have an idea of a beginning and a ending and set of conflicts that I want to explore, but I'm totally open to re-thinking everything throughout the entire filmmaking process. I want the main creative process to be on set not at home in-front of a computer. I also want the majority of ideas to come out of interaction and collaboration. I guess I find my own ideas boring but when I discover things or witness things happening in the moment I find it much more fascinating. It feels real and I take it seriously. I self destruct when I work alone. I can only make a film if its pegged in reality. Before I write anything I'll do research. I'll find locations and people I want to use in films. I use a lot documentary elements in my films. I learned a lot from making documentaries, but ultimately I don't think I want to make documentaries. My films do look a lot like documentaries and most people at first think they are. I guess they are sort of like documentaries that are controlled through rehearsing and improvising with actors.

Ha, I talked about myself much more then I meant to. I just wanted to throw out a different process of making films. That's not to say that it's the right way to make films. There's a long history of making films by using scripts in a conventional way and it's produced many great films. However, this process has served me well.

[RONSAUCE]

Also, a realization that I've had a few times is that: wouldn't it be much more productive to find an actor and rehearse and improvise with him and shoot for a year and slowly build a film, rather than sit a home and write by yourself? Films can be made quite cheaply now. You don't have plan for months and then precisely execute them over the course of heavily regimented long days.

I like long shoots. I like the journey of making films and It doesn't have to be a big burden. No more of a burden than practicing with your hockey team two or three nights a week.

[Johnny Boy]

I keep a folder of Word files like Brutus, of mainly ideas hitting the paper. I read it all over yesterday and it looks like Crackup at the Race Riots part two. I too find it difficult to flesh out a continuing narrative, because I get so easily bored. I'm putting together this thing about a man whose fancy won't love him because he doesn't own a house, and so he tries his hand at various types of jobs in order to buy one. The character's name is Truco, which is Spanish for trick. I guess I see it as a romance novel, but as of now I just have notes and bits of dialogue.

[yourbuddyoz]

I've written 6 screenplays worth mentioning. I spent most of 2007 entering a short film, my scripts, and my poetry into festivals and contests. Nothing happened and I racked up about 600 bucks on my credit card on entry fees.

All this work without validation can get you down, but keep at it. It's not for me to self examine all day whether or not I'm a great writer. All that matters is to keep doing it and get better, which is inevitable if you keep doing it for the right reasons. I feel like one of these days I'll get my foot in the door and have this arsenal of material to draw upon. So once an opportunity comes along, I won't waste it. Too much time locked in the bedroom, stewing in my own sweat and farts, bent over the keyboard perfecting stories to throw that chance away.

I worked as a reader and judge for an online screenwriting contest for two years. The people that read and judge are always interns or fools or both! And formulaic genre films always win, which is not what I write. Be weary of a lot of these contests.

About your methods Ronsauce, I like people with the balls to create like that. I would like to get out in the field and let it flow like that. Modern technology indeed does make these methods all the more feasible. But I also love planning things out. Mamet said that the general should have his whole battle mapped out in the comfort of his office so once he's in the field he only has to be an administrator and make sure things go according to plan.

I'm somewhere in between. I live for the odd peripheral things captured in movies that were not planned for but captured - stuff from Korine, Altman, and Herzog. My writing kind of anticipates things like that. I try to mimic a lot of people talking at the same time, saying things that purposely get lost or muddy; odd characters doing random things and minute images that approximate what could be found on location and used to accumulate the mood of a scene. Basically a vérité style of writing that points toward essence above content. Content can be blueprinted and carefully executed, but essence has to emerge naturally and miraculously. If I were to be a stickler for trying to recreate with complete accuracy what was on the page, then the magic would go right out of it.

I was arguing with a friend about Terrence Malick - in particular The New World. I believe he works with an extremely loose sketch and makes the bulk of his movie with a highly developed sense of intuition. I said it seems as though he'd set up, for example, an Indian village and give the actors a rough outline of what he wanted them to do, then he'd wander through with his cameramen, gathering little poetic moments as they were discovered. My chum disagreed. He believes the magic of Malick is that he knows it all in advance. The hands pulling up the muscle shell from the water or tracking Pocahontas through the tall grass. It's all pre-orchestrated but meticulously made to feel like it was captured by serendipity. Perhaps it's a little of both. I think he's a genius either way.

I am endlessly inspired by that sort of unknown quality where you aren't sure what was improvised or discovered or planned from day one and I constantly try to write this sort of slippery, ambiguous material.

I

[yourbuddyoz]

also, you guys with a lot of random unfinished ideas - have you ever thought of weaving them together into some kind of ensemble, collage-like piece? usually the only rule for work like this is that they orbit a common location or milieu - like los angeles in short cuts, high school for fast time at ridgemont high, xenia for gummo, or 70s austin in dazed and confused...

i wonder why more people don't try and write or make ensemble movies like this. in this decade there's not been many real attempts to do this. royal tenenbaums, elephant, the company and a prairie home companion might be the last ones i know of... and of course love actually and high school musical.