the friedorange years

Heyy... 2005 is going to be an AWESOME year of blockbuster movies... I'm not sure about the Indie scene, BUT it looks like there are gonna be heaps of stylish films coming out, unlike 2004 which was a cruddy year in terms of studio films (I thought 1999 was the last 'great' year of movies, hopefully 2005 will be too).

Anyway, here's the Sin City trailer - www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/sin_city.html

Co-Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller! To be honest I haven't read the original comics... but this looks stunning visually. The song from the trailer is kickass - Cells by The Servant (an instrumental version though). Hopefully this film will have as much substance as the credentials attached to it promises.

Other films coming out: Episode III which will hopefully un-lame like the rest of the new SW films, Batman Begins from Christopher Nolan (can he heal this franchise?), Constantine with Keanu Reeves (yet another comic book adaptation).

Hmm... what else is there? There's a remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Tim Burton (woohooo! Go my fave director...) and War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg teaming up again after the awesome Minority Report.

Today I received a massive package from Amazon with 8 more film books. Okay, I still haven't finished the one I got last week on sound. It's a great book though - it has numerous typos, but the information is clear cut and concise:

Sound for Film and Television by Tomlinson Holman - a professor at USC and the guy involved with THX (you know, the big audio thing you see before every movie? yeah, he developed that stuff...)

Just ordered a bunch of gear from B&H photo/video too - they have a great catalogue and selection - and international shipping. You can check it out: www.bhphotovideo.com

Other film trailers are available at: www.apple.com/trailers

As for The Incredibles I still haven't seen it but it looks promising... another wacky pic from Pixar.

Ok, I'm done re-designing the site, it'll be up in a few days. Hahah... it's really really really grey.

I guarantee you there are no colours on the site.

But in about 10 days I'll be able to put on random photos. Yes. I guess the whole minimalistic approach is a quest for a webpage that is pure content and nothing else. Great. There'll be no new content for a while however, lol.

This is the new format for friedorange/steamedguava/Effo Films. I've decided to tone the whole website thing down while I concentrate on other stuff - mainly writing. From now on I'll be updating news straight onto the blog instead of having a separate news page on the website. The blog will be the hub of the website, and the site will be simplified so that it'll have only People and Works. Two sections. Short and sweet.

Meanwhile, Happy holidays!

The coming 2 months are going to be tough, mainly in the development department - more writing to be done, more script editing, more fleshing out of characters and so on. In addition to short film scripts, I've started developing a full length feature screenplay. Looks like I'm going overboard with this writing stuff, but I'm really enjoying it - heck, I think I'll just keep writing until I feel like eventually making one of these things.

So that's the plan: More writing until something comes along I really really like, and when that happens I will make it.

Yeah, I'm gonna redesign the website too so it's uh, more decipherable for people who go on the website the first time. After reading The Elements of Style recently I realised how bloated my writing was. Time to improve...

Not much happening except some writing, reading, eating, playing guitar and songwriting. The official holiday season's coming up, so I'm gonna take a break for a few days. Cya.

Okay, so the title is self explanatory - Effo Films now has high speed internet access! Ahem, one thing though, ISP's seem to have a way of SCREWING AROUND with ACCOUNTS, I mean, they never get anything right the first time. The ONLY REASON we went with broadband was to cut out the installation fee AND because it was cheaper per month than dial up plus a second line. Well guess what they had to do? They charged us for the installation fee AND they charged us ten extra per month, just because for some reason they couldn't set up, 'direct tolls' fast enough. Right.

Anyway, broadband is really beautiful - now that I have it, I have no idea what to download. Ahh, at least now, web pages snap into picture.

As for film developments - I've finished reading The Art of Dramatic Writing, and overall, good book, except the last 30 pages were completely useless. I'd say, the book goes from really useful and to the point to rubbish at the very end. But if you're an aspiring filmmaker/playwright/screenwriter, its worth reading. Just remember that you don't have to agree with everything this guy says (but sometimes it's good to though, haha...).

Okay, I take back my complaints about the service - broadband IS NICE... can't believe it costs less than dial-up...

:o)

After a lot of thinking and junk food, I've come up with a possible storyline for a hypothetical short:

Prologue - a mafia/gangster film based on the characters from the original Epilogue short. Both leads (Hamish Fletcher and Patrick Sham) have expressed interest in signing up for it, now the final consideration is producing a quality script that both stands alone and connects with the first film. If all goes well, Prologue may very well happen. If not, expect some starkly different films - in the vein of experimental, incohesive and downright weird bottle caps. More later.

Development continues, now it looks like I have two scripts in the works:

1) A Crime/Morality Story
2) An Experimental Comedy

Anyways, not much else to say, except I'm sure more will happen next week. Right now it's just about me polishing up and working out these storylines, the dialogue, the motivations, characters and so on so that my scripts are up to a shoot-able standard. More later.

Okay, did more writing in the last few days, and the characters are starting to come alive. On the audio equipment front, I've been researching on booms and shockmounts, and if possible, I'll be setting up a proper kit. In that case it'll be necessary to have an additional crew member who is completely in charge of location sound, that is:

Boom Operation
Recording Dialogue
Recording Ambience

Anyone interested? If you want an opportunity to get involved in some very small scale shoots in January 2005 (we're talking 1-3 day shoots), don't hesitate to contact effofilms@yahoo.co.nz to let me know - we probably need only one main 'sound person' as the majority of the scenes involve dialogue in two-people indoor locations. If I get no app. the position will go to any friends/actors not in scenes getting filmed. You'll obviously get to learn a lot about the whole process, because to be quite honest, no one knows anything here.

:o)

Heyy,

Nothing much, still reading stuff, projects still in development, still eating food. On a more of a production level matter, I'm doing an upgrade of audio gear for the upcoming round of productions. In the Epilogue, I used an on-camera microphone for location sound and a $30 stereo 'I dont' know what it is' microphone on a Mini-Disc Walkman for post production sound including VO work and all music.

So here's my complaint: Consumer Grade Mini-Disc Walkmans aren't the best option for audio recording. Sure, they have a recording function, but in most cases there isn't an inexpensive or convenient way of outputting the audio. Either you output using the analog-outs to your computer or you have to buy/rent a Mini-Disc 'deck' that can output optical.

One other thing too is that they are pretty damn noisy. The infamous 'putting' and 'whirring' occurs at an estimated period of every 5 seconds, much of the time completely spontaneously, stuffing up what's supposed to be pristine pure, beautiful sound. It's amazing that these things can be manufactured with such a deficiency, to be honest the machine noise is louder than some of the stuff I'm trying to record, since it's right inside the internals of the walkman.

Anyways, so here are the planned list of upgrades:

1) 2x small diaphragm microphones - for stereo sound, usable for music, dialogue, voice-over work, etc. I guess you're supposed to find microphones with different characteristics to suit each purpose, but at this budget, I'm going to experiment more and find compromise. I'm sure if I can't buy excellence, I'll create it. Or I'll just settle with what I have.

2) A solid state recorder that records right onto memory cards. Hah! Now I'll be able to drag and drop things right onto my computer, not in real time. The best alternative I can see so far that is more financially realistic compared to DAT at this stage. Not to mention the benefits it can have for my workflow.

It's all happenin'.

Okay, so I'm officially 50 pages into the drama book now, got about 250 pages to go. Hahah, I never knew it would be this hard... I better force myself to finish reading it before I get out a firelighter and smoke the whole book.

I've figured out some random advertisements I could do. So instead of doing a short film for one of the projects, I'm gonna make a collection of 30-second advertisements... yeah... short films and advertisements, TV promos... sounds like fun.

Oh, and Effo Films is gonna have broadband in about 20 days. That means faster uploads to the site (not that it'll change anything much but hey, news is news). We are officially in December. The twelvth (or is it twelveth? or is it twelfth or twelth?) month of the year. Yeah, the 4th day of that month.

I've been slacking off the last few days, yesterday wasn't too bad. I'm reading this book called, "The Art of Dramatic Writing" by Lajos Egri. It makes a lot of good points about bad plays, and for a book written in 1946, it's surprisingly relevent even now. Hmmm... I guess storytelling never changes.

Anyway, on the production side of things, I'm going around to Placemakers to get some materials and equipment for a home-built dolly system. I'm trying to figure out a design that's relatively affordable. More later.

I spoke with a certain other filmmaker yesterday, as of this moment the joint-project is not finalised and will be dependent on time and schedule, so I will be focussing primarily on my own projects these few months.

As for ideas, I have 3 fleshed out plots that I'm still playing with now, hoping to merge two of them into one story.