If you’re dying to know what happens next, you can immediately satisfy your curiosity with second film Rock:

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“The original idea came from my own fascination with One World Trade Center and all that history behind it. I would find myself drawn to it whenever I walked passed/saw it rising into the sky. I also have a document where I deposit snippets of ideas, and one of those was “a man staring at 9/11 footage to feel emotion”. The thought of merging these two concepts was very interesting to me. Trying to somehow mirror a man’s emotional destruction and rebuilding with the destruction and rebuilding of the World Trade Center towers.”

After writing a treatment for the film Garchar teamed up with actor and writer Graci Carli – a friend he met on the acting programme during film school at Ohio’s Wright State University – who he’d wanted to collaborate with since they both moved to New York. The script and revisions bounced between the two of them until it was ready to move into production. Leading man Alex Goodman also came from the Wright State acting programme and had previously worked with Garchar on his graduating thesis project Somewhere Never Traveled. In fact, although New York based, the production became very much of an Ohio alumni affair:

“Most everyone in a key position on the film went to school with me in Ohio. Joanna Rudolph, who produced the film, is pretty much the only person I met in New York…but I did meet her through a friend I went to school with in Ohio. Cole Pisano, the director of photography, and Jeremy Dempe, assistant camera, actually came in from Ohio to Brooklyn to shoot, and so did Alex. So we were all staying together in my little studio apartment (which also doubled as the set with some production design by Rachel Lowery) for the five shoot days.

We shot on a hacked Panasonic GH2 with an adapter for Nikon lenses. They were nice and sharp and fast, which was good because we were using a lot of available light, especially at night. Cole was really incredible. Not only does he understand exposure better than anyone I know, he also had very simple lights. He brought a few china balls and practicals and he and Jeremy created what they called the ‘party plank’, sticking some LED lights on a foam board to help out with some of the night stuff.”

Squeezing post into the hours between the commitments of life and his job as a freelance editor, Garchar spent a year in Avid Media Composer off and on taking The Ascent through post, with Steve Pequignot handling color correction and Steve Giammaria stepping up for the final sound mix – bringing the film in for its just over $3000 Indiegogo raised budget.

And here’s a teaser for all seven films in the series, which you’ll find on the NebCinematics Vimeo Channel as they land:

“I’ve always thought that I’d have a go at making films. I trained as an actor and loved making short films but theatre was my thing. Then one evening on stage we had a particularly receptive and alert audience, the evening had been brilliant and I somehow knew I’d never get the feeling of that again. During those times when I wasn’t ‘acting’ I worked in a cinema to pay the rent, I still performed in occasional theatre productions but I became more interested in film, not being ‘in’ film but rather exhibition. Through that I found myself creating events, curating festivals and writing business plans for projects with a focus on filmmakers and the creative industries. There was no time to spend rehearsing and performing plays but I started working with writers and directors on script development, very occasionally directing when there was time.

I pitched the idea to a production company that a friend had mentioned might be interested. They were completing their third short and looking for their next project. They also loved the script and could see the potential in the ideas surrounding the production. We’re a team consisting of a writer, director and two producers, each of us bringing in contacts and as we’re all of a certain age, it means we have quite a few people we can seek out for information!”

Joe and the Rudie Can’t Fail team are heading into the final leg of their Indiegogo campaign and are just 40% shy of their funding goal. Take a look at this pitch video to meet the rest of the team, find out more about the film and how supporting the campaign will help make the film a reality:

So that’s how the team will move into production with your help, but what plans do they have for the film once it’s finished?

“Once completed this is a film very much designed for the festival circuit. The film script repeats twice, you hear the same words and see the same shots twice. It’s a two hander and in the second half of the film one of those characters changes sex, from a daughter to a son. What an audience will make of that will be very interesting and I imagine very changeable. I’d hope that would make for good discussion; something that perhaps wouldn’t happen so easily if we released it online immediately. We’ll target a range of established short film festivals alongside the feature film festivals. The film will also be eligible for LGBT festivals as the second half of the film will raise issues within that community.

I’ve always been an advocate that one day short films will make money. I think digital software and online platforms alongside mobile devices will be the making of the Short Film Industry. But I think we’ll only start to really see that once filmmakers embrace the potential of social media, marketing and PR. You won’t make much money if you are only selling your film to you friends and family.”

As you’d expect, the campaign is offering a stack of rewards to backers including cases of beer and my personal favourite, ‘The Golden Hot Pants Perk’, surely that’s more than enough to tempt you over to the Rudie Can’t Fail Indiegogo page to pledge your support!

“We thought of this as a sequel to 30 Century Man” – James Bowthorpe.

Which, if you like your cycle films as much as we do, you can enjoy below:

And here’s the three-part making of video:

“My main activity is acting and at the time I wasn’t getting much of the type of work I wanted as an actor. Since I had only been at it for no more than a couple of years, I really needed something that would get me noticed by the right people (agents, directors, casting directors) in order to get my acting career moving forward. What I was after was something with a compelling story, that looked very cinematic and had an immersive sound design and score in which I could deliver a good performance. So many of my actor friends, and myself, have worked on projects for their reels that didn’t tick all those boxes. Projects where the performances and cinematography would be great, but the sound work and music wouldn’t be on the same level and would drag the project down as a whole. So it was really crucial I find a project that would be strong on all those levels.

Before I got into acting, I completed a film degree at Thames Valley University so I more or less knew what it would take to achieve the type of film I wanted to work on. I soon realised that waiting for that ‘perfect’ project to come along would last forever and decided to try to do it all myself as no one would do it for me. But I needed an idea for a script/story that would be good enough to stand on its own, rather than something that looked as if it had been put together for showcase purposes.”

Searching out a story for his acting vehicle, Kolelas found himself inspired when he came across a camera test video whilst surfing Vimeo in which someone was filmed walking around the Parisian underground and streets, set to an atmospheric soundtrack. Two nights later, his script was complete and his Vimeo search for a Paris based cinematographer led to Guillaume Miquel who liked the script and agreed to meet up in Paris. A month of pre-production and ads for French crew and cast in La Maison du Film Court and it was time to cast the actress who would play opposite him.

“I actually had a really good selection of actresses replying to audition for the part of Karina, I had also invited an old friend of mine, Anoushka Ravanshad, to audition, as I had recently found out that she was also into acting and had been studying for the past few years. Whilst three of the girls that auditioned were really strong and gave me a hard time choosing, I decided to cast Anoushka, as she was the one I was able to communicate with the most comfortably – not surprising as I already knew her – but it made it so much easier to communicate with her about ideas of where to take the performance, which ultimately took a big weight off my shoulders. I didn’t have to worry about how I spoke (formally or casually?) with someone I had just met a couple of weeks before, which would have made me very self-conscious and worried about all the wrong things.”

During this period Kolelas wandered Paris, hunting for the perfect streets (although convenience mostly trumped beauty) and visiting hotels for cheap, non-modern looking hotel rooms which were also big enough to accommodate a crew. With the locations found, the production shot for three days on a Canon 7D with a rented a set of Zeiss Compact Prime Lens. An extended period of post followed:

“Once the shoot was complete I came back to London with the rushes and found my editor, colorist, composer and sound designer with the help of friends, Mandy and ReverNation. Ellie Johnson from Speade did the edit, Mikey Rossiter from The Mill graded it, Amy Smith composed the music, it was amazing to see how she was able to translate the ideas and feeling I described into music and intonations, and Elliot Malone did the sound design which made such a difference to the end result. I had to pull-in massive favours, and everyone worked on Fifty Pence after hours, which made post-production take around 9 months, but I managed to work with such talented people, which made the wait SO worth it!”

And here’s a quick behind the scenes video:

Via Twitch

Spring Breakers heralds what is being described as Korine’s most mainstream film to date. Personally I’d have to disagree with that categorisation, more liking is that it’s a tag applied to the film because of the presence of Disney’s finests, Selina Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens within the cast. The title pretty much sums up the film’s contents. For those unfamiliar with the custom, Spring Break is a singularly American past time, the premise of which seems to be that the vast majority of US university students go away over the Easter holidays to a hot beach destination. From my (limited) viewpoint, the poor go to Florida, the rich used to go to Cancun but now go to Boracay and the people in the middle fill the Cancun void. Once they arrive, they basically drink excessively and in between pour booze all over themselves (what a waste). I assume they also take loads of drugs but can’t say I witnessed that. I did however see girls remove their bikini tops and invite boys to pour drinks over their breasts, whilst the boys behave like they’re ballers when in reality they’re being (to use their vernacular) total douchebags. If you’re wondering how I gained my first hand insight into such japes, I can confirm that some very annoying Spring Breaking Americans irritated me whilst I was in Boracay. In case it’s not clear, I found the whole real life experience of Spring Break exasperatingly dull.

Spring Breakers the film follows four girls (Hudgens, Gomez, Rachel Korine and Ashley Benson who manage, against the odds, to go from their shit hole, one horse town to Florida on Spring Break. Once there, they get up to all the usual Spring Break shenanigans including sniffing coke off naked women. Unfortunately for them they get caught and end up in prison in just their bikinis. They’re bailed out by Alien, a real life gangster rapper played by James Franco. Undeterred by their brief spell in the slammer they follow Alien in to a life of crime.

Let me be clear; Korine could have made a really good film if he hadn’t allowed himself to get distracted by fake tits, massive arses and girls throwing alcohol around (such a waste). There were parts of the film detailing teens frolicking on the beach which could have been lifted straight from Cunningham’s Windowlicker promo – the light saturation and cinematography reminded me of the infamous beach scene, minus the grotesque face. As you may have gathered from my Boracay experience, watching stupid kids do stupid shit is trying at best and really fucking boring at worst. Korine dedicates around a third of the film to following the girls around when instead he could have wrapped it up in a ten minute montage and we’d have still got the measure of the girls and the debauched Spring Break experience.

Franco however makes this film and holds you mesmerised every second he’s on screen. As with every role Franco takes on, he throws himself so whole heartedly in to it that you wonder why he doesn’t sport corn rows and grills all the time. Alien is the gangster as described in hip hop. He has a slick drugs operation, guns on his walls and most importantly any Calvin Klein aftershave he wants. The girls become enamoured with Alien and his lifestyle whilst the watcher wonders what his motives are for rescuing the girls from their hopeless situation. As times goes on, the girls shed numbers until Alien is left with his core girls who are just as gangster as he is. Whilst Franco is amazing the girls could be played by anyone in a bikini. I can only assume that Gomez and Hudgens took on the role to shed they’re squeaky clean images. I’m not sure if it’s worked or not as Hudgens’ acting comprises licking things in a provocative manner whilst Gomez cries and rings her grandmother. Rachel Korine obviously is pretty much a shoe in for any film her husband makes, whilst I’ve never heard of Ashley Benson and I don’t think she’ll be winning awards any time soon.

Ultimately, despite assertions to the contrary, this is not a mainstream film. The themes are too uncomfortable and at times the cinematography feels too exploitative. Spring Breakers is mostly entertaining, but I won’t be imploring others to strip down, get their drink on and join the party.

Clocking up over 12K views and selected for the much coveted Vimeo Staff Picks in the first 24 hours of its release, Ryan Koo’s Amateur looks to be a hot property in the world of online video at the moment. For the few of you out there unfamiliar with Koo’s work; as well as being one half of the creative duo behind one of our favourite web series’ The West Side, he’s also the founder of DIY filmmaking site and essential resource nofilmschool.

Raising over $125k on Kickstarter for his feature film Manchild (none of which was spent on the creation of this short), Koo created Amateur as the “lead-in short film” to that feature, hoping to raise greater awareness and support for his lengthier project, whilst also showing exactly what he is capable of.

Dialogue-heavy and character-based, with a truly outstanding lead performance from Curtiss Cook Jr, Amateur’s measured pace won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. This is filmmaking that requires your undivided attention if you’re to fully reap the rewards. Cleverly subverting the cliches you’ll be all too familiar with if you’ve ever watched a basketball movie before, Koo’s short has one of the most satisfying of ends – the kind that actually gives you goosebumps.

“Amateur is a short prequel demonstrating my vision for Manchild, the feature film we’re making next. This short focuses on an encounter between a street agent and a high school basketball player, but as a result of what you see here, the recruiter goes on to pursue younger, more naïve players — including TJ, the 13 year-old protagonist of our feature film Manchild” – Ryan Koo on manchild.com

There is not a single visual effect in this short and it’s basically an eight-minute conversation between two people, so there won’t be a wondrous VFX demo to show – Read more about the making of Amateur on NoFilmSchool

Although a vast exaggeration on reality, Monster Flu was in-part inspired by Wiebe’s mother who, whilst not living in self-imposed isolation, is quick to reach for the hand sanitizer, especially in flu season. Other inspiration came in the form of a love of French cinema and a desire to work within creative constraints:

“I wanted to make film without dialogue that was voice over driven, because sometimes, I like to work within confines or a set of rules. I wanted the voice over to be in French, because although I don’t speak the language, I find it aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, a lot of my favorite uses of voice over are found in French films, so it seemed appropriate. I also wanted to use a puppet. The idea continued to evolve through out the process – it wasn’t until shortly before the shoot began that I decided to change the ending to depict Vincent clearly operating the puppet, but that was definitely a ‘eureka!’ moment that made for what I would consider a meaningful pay off. “

Despite the logistics of working with puppets and hazmat suits, the three day, 16mm shoot went off smoothly with the crew able to maintain a fun atmosphere on set, while getting the film in the can. Post however, and the depiction of the ‘germ sequence’ took a bit longer than expected to achieve:

“I struggled and failed through a few different attempts at depicting the germs. I had shot some green screen stuff that was all abandoned. I wanted to create a sequence that paid homage to Scotty’s dream sequence in Vertigo; in which Vincent envisioned Toby falling into a germy abyss, but it just was not working. Luckily, I found Imaging a Hidden World on archive.org, and the owners of the material were willing to let me use it. It’s really an amazing piece of educational filmmaking with a lot of images that I really love, and the texture really fit within the world of Monster Flu.”

Referencing the music of Uno Lady, Philip Glass, Tangerine Dream, Air and Yann Tierson, Wiebe worked with friend and composer Nate Scheible for Monster Flu’s score, which along with Hassan Amejal’s emotive voice over and Lucas Schira’s sound design elevated the entire film to something Wiebe’s extremely proud of.

Part of Fresh Ink’s The Voices Project, Martha Goddard directs Emma Campbell from Carolyn Burns’ original monologue in Stick; the story of a girl baring all to a support group of strangers.

I’ve written about the process The Voices Project goes through as it moves stories from script to stage to screen over on nofilmschool. You can also hear the specifics of Stick’s development journey in this making of:

Hand drawn frame by frame in a cross hatch style with sharpies, Cabbit from Soogie is a delightful animated passion project, which attracted a global team of contributors over its four year production period. Soogie joins us to discuss the cathartic nature of creative work and how the act of collaboration can shift the tone and form of a piece of work.

Sometimes when you’re so involved you just don’t think about the mistakes or how much time is wasted. You just sort of let it happen.

Showlinks
Cabbit
The Soogie Soundcloud

Cabbit (2012)
Cabbit is a charming little animal spirit whom spends its days tea-dancing with kindred spirits and exploring the wonders of the natural world. Cabbit and kin live in oblivion to the human world until one day it quite literally crosses paths with some humans and their reckless, rambling automobiles. Fortunately for Cabbit, it possesses the power to control the heavens. The tale does not, however, play our so well for the humans.

Blending dark comedy with moments of violent drama, Dan Sully’s first venture into narrative shorts, The Ellington Kid, carries on the impressive directorial work he displayed in a series of music videos earlier in his career. Telling the story of the titular Ellington Kid, Sully’s stand-out short is based on an urban legend, told to him by a musician in one the aforementioned promos.

In a typical South London kebab shop Nathan tells Beefy a story. It’s a story he’s heard about the Ellington kid, who got stabbed and found refuge in the very kebab shop they are sitting in.

Already showcased as part of the Vice shorts series, speaking to director Sully for Short of the Week, I was eager to find out how the success of his first short has affected his career and what’s next in the pipeline:

“I’ve been very lucky with the short…Off the back of it I now have an agent and it looks like it will help me get funding to make a second bigger short. I’m also meeting people in the features world at the moment too. Early days, but that is the goal that I’m working towards – making a feature film. I’m currently writing my second short, with another writer, Lewis Bowman, who is actually the frontman of a band I’ve made two music videos for – Chapel Club. It’s longer and has a bit more to it… I won’t say much more about it but I am excited about it and am looking forward to making it at some point this year.”

What Richard Did is the third film from Lenny Abrahamson , a director we’ve had our eye on ever since he sat down with MarBelle to discuss his critically acclaimed (and financially lucrative) second feature Garage. The film examines the culpability of the well to do teenagers at its centre and the moral compass of individuals.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be well aware that many countries are currently embroiled in a recession so deep, it’s hard to even imagine the light at the end of this dour tunnel. Often held up as emblematic of the crazy lending culture that simply could not continue is Ireland, but even in the time of the Celtic Tiger there was always an unspoken chasm between classes. Whilst never explicitly stated it’s clear that Richard (played by an excellent Jack Reynor) comes from an affluent family; he’s 17 years old, on the cusp of beginning his university career and spends his days driving around Dublin in a brand new Golf, sporting designer sunglasses and hanging out in the family’s large home on the Dublin coast. He is the alpha male of not only his school mates, but his rugby club too and for these reasons behaves as he wishes and is revered by friends and peers alike, along with some of his elders. However, Richard oversteps the mark when he steals Roisin Murphy’s Lara from his team mate Conor. Whilst most in the group would acquiesce to his claiming their girlfriend like so much chattel, Conor stages a sort of fight back and from this flows Richard’s self-justified desire for revenge and its consequences.

Whilst I’m not completely enamoured with What Richard Did, I was taken with its characterisation of people’s reactions to events somewhat out of their control. Richard’s father’s (played amazingly by Lars Mikkelsen, brother of Mads) behaviour is particularly questionable and made me considered the push/pull of feelings parents invariable experience when they discover their child has spectacularly fucked up. Equally, Richard (as so many of us secretly do) believes himself to be a hero for much of the film, despite his comportment being far from heroic. Ultimately, events in What Richard Did don’t coalesce into a big finale but instead leave the audience, if you’re anything like me, pondering questions of morality.

“Inspired by the work of Tsai Ming Liang and Victor Erice, ‘Dry’ is the result of a fascination with telling stories more through visual imagery and mood than classical plot exposition. In the same way that still photography can contain a story even within the scope of a single photograph and meanings can only become clear in hindsight, we travel through the locations of the film as if flipping through a photo album or sightseeing through our own memories.​”

When heartbreak has the potential to flare up at you from every corner of the city it’s time to get the get the fuck out of town. Merlin Bronques shows us how to forget and move on in the first episode of his documentary of now, How to Disappear Completely.

Amanda Boyle’s temporally shifted love story Skirt was amongst our favourite work of the 2012. She joins us today to discuss new film Care, a short about a middle aged district nurse who having fallen out of her own life, becomes increasing involved in the lives of two very different women.

There were lots of themes that resonated with me. It’s much darker material than I’d approached before & that was interesting.

Showlinks
Amanda Boyle
@Amanda_Boyle
Kursk
Playhouse Presents
Edges – Dolores Marat

Care (2012)
Middle class and middle aged, district nurse Natalie has become trapped in an existence of meaningless routine until she’s drawn into the lives of two very different women – Elsie, an elderly lady nearing the end of her life and Sammy, the young girl next door, who seemingly has everything to live for.
 
As Natalie’s own ordered world slowly begins to unravel, the white noise in her head starts to seep into the worlds of the other women with Natalie’s dreams and fears colliding with their realities.

Links

This is Vanity (2012)
This Is Vanity tells the story of a tiring mother who struggles to protect both herself and her teenage disabled daughter from the continual attacks of local adolescents. Repeatedly rebuffed and frustrated by the authorities, she ultimately turns to a far greater power than can be found on her failing human plane.

Early last year, I completed my debut feature film, Life Just Is – an arthouse drama about a week in the lives of some recent graduates who struggle to cope with the romantic and existential problems raised by the transition into adulthood proper. The making of the film was outlined on DN across three previous pieces; Taking the Plunge, From Paper Cut to Fine Cut and Finishing the Film. Now, almost a year on, it seemed fitting to attempt to chart the journey that my producers and I have been on since finishing the film. If you’ve ever been told that making the film is only half the battle, you’ve been told right…

As I detailed in my previous post, we held a cast and crew screening for the film shortly after completing it. What I didn’t mention was that, alongside this screening, we also held a small, private screening for industry professionals at MPC in Soho. The guest list was assembled from prior industry contacts and people whose details we collated over hours and hours of research: essentially, we wanted to show the film to as many sales agents and distributors as possible. As can be expected, the screening was an extremely stressful event – the first time the film was going in front of the industry gatekeepers. I remember at the time feeling a distinct sense of distress in the pit of my stomach, and coming away feeling like it was a total disaster. Looking back, I don’t know why… Sure, several of our target distributors didn’t show up and a few who did come walked out halfway through, but there were also plenty of compliments and, best of all, some interest in the film. This interest soon developed into a distribution deal with Independent Distribution, meaning that, far from being a disaster, we had achieved exactly what we wanted from the screening.

Before committing to the deal with Independent Distribution, however, we decided we wanted to explore our options. As mentioned, not all of our target distributors made it to the screening, so we began a lengthy process of sending out screeners, receiving feedback and discussing the film with other companies. But ultimately it was the offer from Independent Distribution, made off the back of the industry screening, that we decided to accept.

However, it wasn’t quite as simple as us just saying yes. Like any distributor would have done, Independent requested a long list of deliverables. Most problematic for us was the small matter of E&O insurance. We had included the cost of the insurance in our budget… but we’d (significantly) underestimated how much it would cost. There was also the added complication of a couple of uncleared logos in the film, which the insurer wanted to exclude from the policy. For a short while, it seemed like we were going to stumble at the last hurdle.

While all of this was going on, however, we’d received some good news: the film had been selected by the Edinburgh International Film Festival and what’s more, it had been chosen to play in competition for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film. The news was a good boost for morale and provided us with the perfect platform from which to launch the film in the UK. It also provided Life Just Is with an extra level of ‘approval’ from the industry, which perhaps proved useful in helping us find the additional investment we needed to purchase the E&O insurance. Thanks to some sterling work from our assistant producer, Roland Holmes, we were even able to clear all the necessary logos and get the insurance with no exclusions!

Nevertheless, even with the E&O insurance secured and the film’s world premiere lined up, both festivals and deliverables continued to give us something of a headache. Festival submissions are something of a nightmare to navigate due to various premiere policies, while the deliverables list simply ended up being a lot of work to put together.

Still, with the deliverables finally assembled and the contract signed, we decided to announce the deal with Independent during the Cannes Film Festival, in order to help us maximise publicity. We also held a market screening during the festival, with an eye to selling the film internationally. We had a good response to the screening (including a very nice review from Robert Koehler), though ultimately we didn’t succeed in getting many distributors or sales agents along – but as Cannes is something of a meat market, I’m just happy there was anyone there.

The following month was our world premiere at Edinburgh. Like at the test screening we held during postproduction, the reaction to the film seemed mixed. But we had two good Q&A sessions, in which the questions revealed a high level of engagement amongst audience members – surely a good sign. We were also selected for both the ‘Best of the Fest’ screenings and a special series of highlight screenings that the festival curated for a partner venue in London, meaning that we were off to a good start.

Under the terms of the deal with Independent, we had agreed that we would take on the mantle of organising the theatrical screenings ourselves. With this in mind, we began to approach venues, sending out more screeners and opening dialogues. Luckily for us, the programmers at the BFI Southbank enjoyed the film and agreed to give us a two-week run. From there, we set about securing screenings at venues including the ICA, Riverside Studios and Genesis Cinema.

Then, finally, the moment of release was upon us. It’s hard to describe the joy, relief, stress and palpable tension caused by sending your film out into the world. I have been working on Life Just Is on and off for the last seven years. For better or for worse, I’ve poured my heart and soul into the film, and it’s understandably become a huge part of my life. The negative comments, somehow, stick in your gut like a knife, while the positive comments (of which there were many, including the honour of being selected as Mark Kermode’s DVD of the Week) seem almost instantly forgotten.

Still, the film is out there now, out in the world and taking on a life of its own. Though that’s not to say we’re not still working hard on it – we still have our sights set on launching internationally. But work on the project is slowly easing off, and now I’m back to square one, hoping I’ll have the chance to do it all again…

Life Just Is is available now on DVD and VOD from all good stockists in the UK and Ireland. Also available are two books released to tie in with the film’s release: Life Just Is: Director’s Journal and Life Just Is: Scriptbook. The former presents an honest and open account of the making of the film, containing as it does an edited version of the journal I kept throughout the seven-year making of the film. The latter contains both the first and final draft of the script. The two books are available internationally on Amazon.

Online Now from Pocket Jakes, the creative partnership of directors Jake Dolgy and Jake Ross, depicts a journey into the world of social interaction. Jake Ross joins us to discuss how the pair coalesced the technological now into a filmic time capsule.

I found that what I was really attracted to was that I could not only tell a great story, but I could also make some kind of commentary on something in our society as well.

Showlinks
Pocket Jakes
Red One
Red Epic
iPhone 4S
After Effects
Miami Nights

Online Now (2012)
Journey into the world of contemporary online social interaction.

We’ve been featuring and following the work of Greek director Stathis Athanasiou for several years here on DN and even from his first appearance on our pages with LIEBESTOD-Four Acts back in 2007, Stathis has never been afraid to experiment with the established boundaries of cinema as we know it. His latest film Alpha, is by far his most ambitious project to date and looks to not only dislodge our preconceptions about the structure of what’s on screen, but also the methods of film creation and exhibition. It also has the most intriguing crowd funding campaign video we’ve ever seen:

We do not think of the movie as an experience that when viewed fades away, but as an excuse, a triggering event, a reason to ignite an artistic conversation and a literal dialogue with everyone interested.

As Stathis lays out in the teaser, Alpha is reaching towards lofty cinematic goals and needs your help to achieve them. The Alpha website has extensive information about the film and the ethos behind its creation and of course you should head over to the campaign’s Indiegogo page and pledge your support.

For some reason we totally missed posting Parade, Piskorzynski’s follow up to the pixilation techniques he used in Gravity, so here it is now:

I first came across Mark Jenkin’s work running Filmstock, when his first film Golden Burn came across our path. It’s been a long time since that film, and Jenkin has grown into an accomplished feature filmmaker. His latest film is Happy Christmas, shot in 2011 and released for free on Vimeo over the 2012 festive period. It’s meditative and contemplative certainly, but without story it most certainly isn’t. Or stories more accurately. The film captures a tone and pace that is uniquely Cornwall, but with characters, moments and interactions that are universal in their humanity, awkwardness and fragility. There is a balance of the local, the quirky regional, and the deeply cinematic that makes it both engaging and moving. The film follows an ensemble of characters struggling with the pressure that comes from modern Christmas festivities and teases out drama through some beautifully tempered dialogue, a fine score and fine performances. The photography is delicate and purposeful and creates surreality and transcendence from the seemingly mundane.

The theme of journeys, both literal in the sense that much of the film follows characters journeying, reflects the emotional journeys undertaken within families at the end of every year as they confront each other and themselves, reflect and look forward. The spirit of the film is reflected in its production. Influenced by the likes of Cassavetes and Godard and embracing the immediate and the unpredictable, the film feels alive with ideas and emotion even as the pace is slow and reflective.

Israeli director Adam Bizanski’s live action puppet short Paul, tells the story of an alienated character searching for his stolen fish through the underbelly of Tel Aviv. Adam joins us for our first interview of 2013 to discuss how he and Paul went from lip-sync performances in his room, to a string of well regarded music videos and a 27 minute neo-noir short funded by Newcastle Brown Ale.

Having a puppet walk around in the real world & trying to maintain that ‘realness’ is a challenge.

Showlinks
Adam Bizansk
Singalong Paul
Canon 60D

Get comfortable and watch the full version of Paul right here, right now: