Giles Hopkins

July 16, 2008

Slow Food, Slow Film?

Lately, media-makers of all stripes have been doing their part to let us know that the world is going to come to an end if we don’t start taking our environmental impact more seriously. It’s a great message to put out there, but one that is especially tough for media-makers to follow in their own companies. Media-making requires a lot of resources.

I’ve been coming up with ways that media production could take a cue from the folks in the Slow Food and Slow Travel movements. The idea behind Slow Food and Slow Travel is that, in order to conserve resources, respect other cultures and foster a healthy planet, we need to do things like buy environmentally sound products, avoid wasting fuel, and support local economies. When I googled “slow film,” all I got were a bunch of negative reviews of movies. In film and new media, “slow” is a dirty word.

What if it wasn’t? What would “Slow Film” entail?

Slow Film

Cutting down on travel costs by maximizing fuel economy of rental cars and skipping extra scouting trips.
Minimizing equipment: Taking only the lightest and most power-efficient equipment.
Shooting using mostly natural light.
Hiring a local crew instead of bringing your own. Hiring local on-camera talent, or in a documentary, allowing local voices to tell the story themselves.
Choosing to make a film with a local setting or subject matter: This connects a film company to its community, and can be a boon to local businesses.
Patronizing local camera stores, restaurants, and other businesses while shooting.
Distributing over the web rather than burning DVDs.
Turning off power when not using post-production equipment.

What else would make good environmental sense, without compromising the quality of your project? Are there film companies out there that are dedicated to producing media in “slow” ways?

July 14, 2008

ABC’s Earth 2100: You, too, can be Al Gore!

Our special agent in New Jersey gave us a tip on a new web and television fusion project from a major network:

Earth 2100 is a “television and internet event” set to debut this fall on ABC [Editor’s Note: The site now simply says “Coming in 2009”]. Here’s how they describe it:

The world’s brightest minds agree that the “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results.

We need you to bring this story to life — to use your imagination to create short videos about what it would be like to live through the next century if we stay on our current path. Using predictions from top experts, we will feed you detailed briefings from the years 2015, 2050, 2070 and 2100 — and you will report back about the dangers that are unfolding before your eyes.

Your videos will be combined with the projections of top scientists, historians, and economists to form a powerful web–based narrative about the perils of our future. We will also select the most compelling reports to form the backbone of our two–hour primetime ABC News broadcast: Earth 2100, airing this fall.

They have a few sample “reports from the future” up there already. Kudos to ABC for trying to combine documentary, fiction and user-generated content all in one go. I see some problems with the approach. . . for one thing, the “reports from the future” are bound to be depressing and bleak – because that’s what all the experts are describing. There is also the problem of combining gorgeous HD footage of experts with cheesily shot, low budget versions of Children of Men. I don’t want to be a wet blanket here – I love documentaries, and I love cheesy, homemade science fiction. . . but I don’t know if I can take the leap to watch both at once.

This project STILL doesn’t solve the “can’t I just get it on YouTube?” problem. Meaning, if you bother to make a movie that’s as clever as the sample clip with the snorkel and the pink walrus – why would you let ABC decide whether or not to distribute it for you? Why would you go to the ABC site, rather than google video or YouTube?

The fact that ABC is going to put some of these in a national broadcast is certainly a draw, and I am all for educating people about climate change and public health any which way you can.

July 2, 2008

Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible: Legendary with a side of Shiny

Nathan Fillion is Shiny (Photo by RavenU)

If you are a true fangirl or fanboy, then news of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” will be old hat by now. Bear with us, we’re excited: Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly) is about to release what he’s calling an “Internet Miniseries Event.” You can watch a trailer via vimeo, or you can read his comments on the Whedonesque blog.

The premise looks hysterical: Neil Patrick Harris is a supervillain, Nathan Fillion is a superhero. They sing, and potentially fight over a girl. What more could you want? The answer is, of course, to watch it free, streaming through your interwebs starting July 15th.

The format looks gosh darn revolutionary: 3 episodes, staggered throughout 1 week in July, free to watch. After that, they’ll be sold online for a “nominal fee,” then they’ll potentially go to DVD.

According to Whedon (or Joss as he likes to call himself), this all started during the writers’ strike, when he and other writer/producers started looking around for alternates to creating studio fare. Joss Whedon has a history of working in mixed media: Buffy was originally a film (a flop), then a TV show (a success), then a comic (wildly praised by pretty much everyone) [Editor’s Note: We’ve even seen the musical episode produced for the stage]. Science fiction in general seems to be ahead of the curve on this yes-people-watch-the-internet thing: Battlestar Galactica has released web-exclusive content, as has Heroes. But no one has ever tried to launch a potential brand from the internet, using known actors who are creating original characters specifically for the web. What’s more, Whedon’s “make it on the fly, on the cheap” concept makes it better matched to the bulk of current web content.

I’m sure this is not the last post we’ll do for Dr. Horrible, since (a) Teague is eventually going to get jealous [Editor’s Note: So jealous…]that I got to post about Joss Whedon and he didn’t and (b) This is pretty much the content we’ve been waiting to cover: Big names with big ideas experimenting in free web formats, rather than running around trying to shut them down.

July 1, 2008

Sex and the City: Women v. Girls

Image by Lots Of SprinklesI usually enjoy picking up the New York Times arts section, but this article struck me as odd, right from the title. Michael Cieply, who writes about the entertainment industry, tries to make a twisted little connection between the new Kit Kittredge film, a G-rated American Girl Doll spin-off, and the blockbuster Sex and the City movie. Cieply crows:

But this G-rated movie adventure is shaping up as Hollywood’s next serious bid for female viewers, some of whom showed their power by pushing the R-rated comedy “Sex and the City” to surprisingly strong first-weekend ticket sales of more than $57 million two weeks ago.

Unless the depression-era Kit Kittredge starts making bathtub cosmopolitans, I sincerely doubt this film has anything to do with the highly commercialized, Prada-encrusted Manhattanites that populate the SATC universe. Except of course, gender.

Why would anyone be surprised that women want to watch movies about women? Courting a female audience is hardly newsworthy, and reducing a kids’ picture to Sex and the City minus the sex seems tawdry and arbitrary. “Women’s pictures” have been around since Kit Kittredge was in diapers. In fact, Ann Hornaday wrote a great article for the Washington Post that looks at the girls-in-the-city formula at the heart of the Sex and the City brand.

Sex in the City, however fabulous it may be, still relies on materialism, stereotypes about women’s bodies and relationships, and an often celebrated ignorance of life outside of wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods. Don’t get me wrong, I love the show, but if I had a daughter old enough to understand the phrase “bikini wax” I wouldn’t let her anywhere near it.

Of course, most of the offerings for young girls aren’t much better. There are the films marketed to girls under the guise of the “Princess” and “Bratz” brands. Then there’s Gossip Girl, which is akin to Sex and the City with more sporadic female camaraderie. What would be newsworthy is a film that wasn’t based on a doll, or an established brand, but on actual girls doing actual girl-like things.

June 27, 2008

Johnny Chung Lee: My newest hero

Image by ElDavid1Chances are you haven’t heard of Johnny Chung Lee yet – but it’s probably only a matter of time. Lee has demonstrated some pretty neat tricks with the Wii remote, and actually tells you how to accomplish them at home (I could devote an entire post to how awesome he is at explaining technology, but I’ll refrain). If building Minority Report style finger tracking and a home-made multi-input whiteboard isn’t enough for you, Lee makes his own $14 Steadycam. He has some really nice demos up on the site, too. The side-by-side comparison between his Steadycam and a camera on a folded tripod is pretty impressive.

What I like about all of these projects is that they are not focused on the most perfect means of exploiting technology, but the fastest, cheapest and simplest. Teague is quite taken with the $14 Steadycam. Now you all know what to get him for his birthday.

June 27, 2008

Why should writers have all the fun?

Image by hereinvannuysThe SAG is looking at extending or renegotiating their contract with the studios, and no doubt weighing their options in light of the most recent WGA strike. Even though it looks like a strike from Hollywood actors is unlikely at this point, it’s interesting to reflect on this extremely bizarre year for studio-produced media. . .

Looking back on the writers’ strike, I have to wonder if it actually changed the landscape of media consumption at all. Did we spend more time watching YouTube? Probably, but I’m guessing that the only careers launched were those of a few adorable kittens. Did we suffer without our regularly scheduled network programming? Possibly, but I was too busy watching Sex and the City reruns. Unless Ben Stiller plans to go around unplugging everyone’s TV’s and trashing their iTunes folders, it’s really going to be tough to make every screen in America go dark.

In the years since the 1988 writers’ strike, regular Americans have become accustomed to consuming media multiple times a day. And while that means we are able to consume more studio-made media (due to DVDs, video streaming services and bittorrent), it also means that it’s harder for the loss of any one type of media (new television dramas, blockbuster films) to make an impact on our daily lives. There’s simply too much good stuff being produced for us to consume all of it. And too much bad stuff that we’re willing to watch anyway.

June 11, 2008

Celtx 1.0 Released

Image by isaleal

Looks like the folks at Celtx have come out with version 1.0. This is a tool for screenwriters of all stripes, and it’s FREE! I’ve been playing with Celtx for a while, and I like what I see.

Review will certainly follow. I’d love to test their theory that this can help people creating non-traditional media (podcasts, games, comics).

June 11, 2008

Something new for your earbuds. . .

Image by swruler9284

Thanks to Wesleying for the heads up about Apple’s new 3G iPhone. I can’t bring myself to watch Steve Jobs’ actual announcement, so I’ll let you all enjoy this parody instead.

I think it kinda speaks for itself.

June 6, 2008

Planning ahead. . .

Photo by Reinis Traidas

One of the things I’ve learned in two years of production is that no two shoots are ever, ever, ever the same.

Before you go into production, it helps to not only visualize the scene you’re trying to create inside your camera, but also the scene on set. Who will play what role? What “props” do you need? (A table is really helpful for snacks, a couple chairs are awesome for tired actors and directors). Does it really make sense for a sound guy to be there if the whole set-up for the day is a single actor and a boom? Can you dismiss your costumer halfway through the day, or will that mean that someone’s bowtie gets droopy?

On our shoots, everyone is expected to be “helpful.” This means that if you’re standing next to the extension cord, you can be the one to hand it to the director (whether you are sound, costumes, an AP or an actor). Nobody is anybody’s “assistant.” The Associate Producer is expected to do 99% of the administrative tasks (the three M’s: Money, Meals, Mistakes – Mapquest would make four). When I was an intern for a small production house, I made up a “shoot kit” for the AP’s. Basically, I bought a plastic tool box, and filled it with all the things you might need on a shoot:

– office supplies (envelopes, pens, scissors)
– first aid supplies
– gaffers tape
– clipboards
– a slate
– white paper (for white balance)
– extra tape stock

Most importantly, I stuck in a list of what belongs in there so that it can be restocked as needed. I would always rather be freakishly organized than lose shoot hours to a pointless pen hunt.