Instant Films in LA, Screening TONIGHT

[Charles Papert]

Hi folks,

Been too busy to do much promo here for our 2nd Anniversary Instant Films festival which is going on now. I myself had a great shoot yesterday, although it was a 21 hour day for me all told and I'm going into the edit on 4 hours of sleep...(I'm gettin' too old for this sort of thing)!

Come see the results as we premiere 7 new films that were written, shot and edited in 48 hours, featuring actors from "The West Wing", "Scrubs", "MAD TV", The Upright Citizen's Brigade and more. Wanna meet the guy who played ar Jar Binks? He's in it too!

All of the information about the screening is at www.instantfilms.tv. If you come, find me after the screening and say "hey, I'm a DVI guy (/gal) too!"

[Jim Gauthier]

We have something like that here in Dallas too although I haven't participated yet. Here it is a 24 hour contest. How many were involved in your production? Were there many teams?

[Charles Papert]

24 hour contest--ouch! I imagine the scale of the projects are quite a bit smaller...does that include writing, too?

At Instant Films, we have 7 to 8 films per festival. Unlike most festivals/contests of this type, we don't invite teams, we invite participants (actors, writers and directors) who are brought together randomly. Our website describes our unique process.

The screening, incidentally, went very well...and yours truly took home Best Picture in the audience awards (and my editor got Best Editing).

[Rob Lohman]

Congratulations Charles! Let us know when yours is up, okay?

[Charles Papert]

Geez Rob, looked like I forgot to honor your request! Well, here it is (on the right side of the page, in both QT and WMV formats). Not necessarily my favorite of my Instant Films efforts, but it's a pretty tight little bit of business, I think.

In the meantime, time for another announcement:

Our 14th festival kicks off tomorrow night with seven new directors (that's a big deal for us, none of the old stanbys!). As a result, I'm taking a stab at writing this time, seeing how the other half lives!

The screening is this Sunday the 27th at the Los Angeles Center Studios. Those DVI'ers in LA, come check it out; it's a great night and a chance to network as well as view some exciting new DV films fresh from the edit bays!

More info at www.instantfilms.tv

[Rob Lohman]

I'll be sure to fly over to LA this weekend then <g>

Thanks for the follow up Charles! I must say the short is a bit
of a mixed bag. But that's mainly me vs. the material. I've never
been a big fan of such things, BUT, the short redeemed itself
for me at the end, hehe.

So I'm going to be a bit bold here, but did I see some vignetting
at 2:00+ and 3:00+? Was this shot on your XL1S?

[Charles Papert]

Yeah, there's a touch of vignetting. My wide-angle adaptor is a bit of a bastard (literally and figuratively), and if I'm not careful with it at certain focus settings it can reveal itself in underscan. It doesn't show up on a broadcast monitor in normal mode, but of course on the web you see all.

It's interesting how much this particular short plays differently now than it did on the night of the screening. It got a LOT of laughs at the time. Now, it seems a bit half-assed to me. The one thing I liked about its tone is that the couple's relationship is pretty real even when surrounded by absurdity.

One thing that got the audience really going was likely to have passed you over as an American cultural reference, Rob. The bag that was tossed onto the wife's head has the well-known logo of Target, a generic cheapie superstore. Thus the descension of the first year present being from Victoria's Secret through the second year from Frederick's of Hollywood (tackier, sleazier) down to the bargain basement, non-giftwrapped Target throwaway gift (the joke pronunciation of which is "Tar-jhay", as if it were French). That combined with the visual gag of having it land on her head resulted in a good 10 seconds of laughter from the crowd.

But I agree with you, it's a mixed bag, no pun intended. The infomercial part of it wasn't a genre I could really sink my teeth into. Viewers of "The West Wing" may recognize the "hostess" as CJ Cregg's (Alison Janney) assistant, Carol, played by Melissa Fitzgerald

[Rob Lohman]

I definitely did not get that... thanks! What I'm wondering is how
we can see vignetting when the footage is letterboxed? Or was
it shot with 16:9 turned on?

[Charles Papert]

That's how badly my adaptor vignettes!! Usually it doesn't make it into the cropped 16:9 area, but it's all over 4:3. It was made for a smaller diameter lens by Century Precision, I got it modified for a relative song with the reasoning that as long as it covered 16:9 I would get some use out of it. As I said, I was being a bit careless by letting it show up in the picture area on that one.

Once I know for sure what's going to shake down with the XL2 (as I discussed in my last post in here), I'll probably step up to a more suitable adaptor.

[Luis Caffesse]

I"m glad to see I'm not the only one who enjoys these sort of silly challenges Charles!

I just finished making a film for the 48 Hour Film Contest in Austin this past weekend, still recovering from the lack of sleep.

I got a great 1 and a half hours of sleep after we finished the script, and about 15 minutes of sleep before I started editing.

It really is a crazy thing to try to pull off, and anyone who hasn't tried it, I highly recommend it.

It's fun, challenging, and you can learn quite a bit about what you're capable of when you paint yourself into a corner like that.

Wish I could have gone to your screening, but I guess shooting my own short is a good excuse for missing the screening of someone elses.

-Luis

PS.
anyone who happens to be in austin, and is interested, the screening for all the films from this years contest will be tomorrow (tuesday) at the regal metropolitan theater.

the only catch is, if you go you have to vote for my film, even though we ran out of time and couldn't put hardly any of the music into the final copy.

:)