R.I.P. Frank Frazetta

I was saddened to hear of the death of the legendary Frank Frazetta this morning.

The Vault of Horror did a nice write-up about his life and legacy.

The amazing Conan paperback covers were my introduction to Frazetta's work - and to a world of larger than life heroes, monsters and oh yeah... those luxuriously captivating women!  I would spend hours falling into those canvases and swimming in those scenes that seemed so real - a doorway into another world. My limited brain could not begin to fathom how a person could dream up, yet alone put on canvas such extraordinary images.

Others like Boris Vallejo and Chris Achillios would follow, but none could touch the blazing talent of the master.  He was a prodigious talent, a huge atlas of a man whose broad shoulders many, many people would stand on to produce much of what we know of the visual language of fantasy, sci-fi, sword & sorcery, and horror.

Frank was an overwhelming influence on me as a young artist and continues to shape the way I view composition, color, and dramatic tension within the image.

He will be tremendously missed, but we are fortunate that his visions will live on forever in the fabric of our daily lives.

The Overactive Editor

One of my pet peeves of modern filmmaking is the overabundance of "coverage" shot for a given scene.

Coverage! coverage! coverage! is the rallying cry for too many directors.  If the story of a scene can be covered with one camera angle, then certainly it must be better if it was shot with 4 or 6 or 10!

And of course once all that film has been burned (or more likely, digital media has been filled up), and the expense of all those camera setups and re-lights (not to mention the assistant editor's time to capture and log all those takes) has been added to the budget, the editor sure as hell better use all those shots - whether it suits the story or not.

Thank goodness we have Walter Murch to remind us what's important:

• An overactive editor, who changes shots too frequently, is like a tour guide who can't stop pointing things out: "And up there we have the Sistine Ceiling, and over here we have the Mona Lisa, and, by the way, look at these floor tiles..." If you are on a tour, you do want the guide to point things out for you, of course, but some of the time you just want to walk around and see what you see.  If the guide - that is to say, the editor - doesn't have the confidence to let people themselves occasionally choose what they want to look at, or to leave things to their imagination, then he is pursuing a goal (complete control) that in the end is self-defeating. People will eventually feel constrained and then resentful from the constant pressure of his hand on the backs of their necks.

Walter Murch,  In The Blink of An Eye

My mantra while editing is that I should always have a reason for making every single cut.  Every time you destroy the fabric of temporal and spatial continuity in a scene to make a cut, you better have a good reason for it.  Just switching to another camera angle because you have one available is not good enough.  Plus, you're giving me a dang headache - so knock it off!

The Commune's Elisabeth Fies Interview

Speaking of courageous independent filmmakers, The Vault of Horror just posted an audio interview with writer/director Elisabeth Fies wherin she brilliantly discusses her horror/thriller The Commune, her take on genre films with a feminist point of view, and the process of indie filmmaking.

(FULL DISCLOSURE:  I am of course the editor and a producer of The Commune so I have a completely biased opinion of the movie - so there.  However, unbiased opinions can be found here, here, and oh yeah, here.)

The Story of Ink

If you are into visionary fantasy films, you owe it to yourself to check out indie cult favorite Ink.

From their website:
An 8-year-old becomes a pawn in a metaphysical war being fought between the forces of light and darkness in this visually outrageous indie thriller.

Kidnapped by a large, strange creature known as Ink, the girl is taken through a labyrinthine world of dream states while those who love her fight to bring her back into the real world and bring salvation to her desperate father.

Ink is one of the most ambitious indie films I have seen.  With a budget of around $250,000 filmmakers Jamin and Kiowa Winans have squeezed every penny of that mini-budget and put it up on the screen.

watch trailer 1  |  watch trailer 2	visit website

It completely sidesteps the usual hallmarks of low-budget filmmaking by including a large cast, many locations, superb fight scenes and amazing art direction.

You're just not supposed to bite off that much with so little budget and no studio backing - but thank goodness they did.

I especially loved the look of the Incubus (or is that Incubi??) with their ever-sneering projected faces:

(do I sense a little Dave McKean perhaps?)

Amazing as it is, the film is not perfect - the first act is somewhat confusing, the dialogue is a bit stilted at times and the editing unnecessarily frenetic in places.  Sounds like a typical Hollywood film. The micro-budget does inevitably show through in some scenes, but that is only because Jamin stubbornly refuses to be held back by commonsense notions of low-budget filmmaking.  Big kudos for pushing the envelope of what can be done!

As is so often the case these days, Ink is also a story about the trevails of independent filmmaking.  I particularly enjoyed reading their blog as they journey through the ever-changing sands of today's indie film world, while traditional distribution models crumble around them.  Ink had a film festival premiere, garnered great reviews (including Aint it Cool News, LA Times and Fangoria), amazing word of mouth, was theatrically released (by Jamin and Kiowa themselves) in Denver, New York and LA, their trailer was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, the movie itself ripped and dowloaded on bit torrent more than 500,000 times, was ranked as high as #16 on imdb, and had army of dedicated and passionate fans who clamored to see the film.

It also never was picked up by a distributor.

Refusing to sign with a distributor who at best might offer a small advance and retain all rights to their baby, and who at worst might just shelve the film, never to pay back a dime, Jamin and Kiowa made the inevitable decision to distribute the movie themselves.  In today's market that meant a combination of continuing to try to find independent theater owners who would screen it for them as well as the usual DVD and digital outlets - Netflix, iTunes, Blockbuster, and Amazon.

(For a more in-depth examination of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of indie filmmaking and distribution, take a listen to their Film Courage radio interview.)

Jamin and Kiowa make the case that the festival circuit of today is no longer a place to sell a film but an opportunity to launch a media blitz that may hopefully ultimately lead to paying back one's investors through self-distribution and a ton of hard work.  If these guys can't make it work, with their incredible film, dedicated fans and tireless work ethic, then the whole model of indie filmmaking is surely broken.

Please check out their work and if you enjoy it, support them by buying directly from their store where they will receive most of the profits.  Indie filmmakers like them can only survive by the continued support of people who actually buy their art and allow the artists the financial freedom to actually do their work for you, the viewer (more on this in a future post.)

The New Golden Age of Television

Interesting blog post by Keith Balmer about the cornucopia of amazing television shows in recent years. 

He echoes what I have been feeling - anyone who says there's nothing good on tv has been living with their head in the sand for the past ten years.

This is as good as it gets folks - set your DVRs, rent 'em from Netflix, catch 'em on Hulu - do yourself a favor and bask in the sunlight of this golden era of tv: Breaking Bad, Treme, The Pacific, Justified, Modern Family, Lost, Parenthood, and soon the new season of Mad Men.

This is by no means a definitive list, there are many other great shows out there.

And then go back and catch up on The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Rescue Me, Deadwood, Dexter, Battlestar Gallactica, Rome, Brotherhood, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Generation Kill, Weeds, True Blood, and of course, The Wire.

You'll be glad you did...

Film is dead

First of all, I love film.

In elementary school I was one of those AV monitor dorks who wheeled the projection equipment into your room and threaded the film whenever your teacher needed a break and forced you to watch that boring volcano documentary again.  I started shooting with Super-8 cameras as a 12-year old and spent many a long night gluing edits together in my dark, noxious-fume-laced-room.  I later finally got my hands on real 16mm equipment as a film major at S.F State.  We Cinema students scoffed at the broadcast arts department kids and their aesthetically inferior crappy-assed video cameras that they were forced to use.  Eventually as a professional video editor, I spent many long hours trying to make video look more like film (Cinelook anybody), but it never really got there.

With its slightly stuttering 24 frames per second, motion picture film suggested another reality altogether different from our own - a place to pour our ideas, our emotions. It was the medium of visual poetry, of dreams. Video on the other hand, presented the harsh, glossy reality of the now. The faster frame rate of 30 frames per second made it appear to our eyes to be a glance not of art, but of our own mediocre everyday reality.  Video was the realm of soap operas, of news, of live events.

I wanted to live in the filmic world of metaphor - of campfire tales and big-screen dreams. I fought the film battle long and hard, but you know, what?

It's over - film is dead!  Long live digital!

Spook Hunt Scene 4 Preview

Here's a scene 4 sneak peek preview (you'll just have to wait until the whole movie is finished to see the entire scene!)

Keep in mind that the audio has not been mixed yet and some shots are still kinda dark as there has been no color grading yet.

Best to watch at night with the lights out!


Spook Hunt Scene 4 Preview from Todd Miro on Vimeo.