i dreamt we screened the films last night...

what a wonderful experience. during the scramble of the art show, screening logistics, marital bliss, and severe exhaustion I some how managed to kick my film on to DVD and strut across the street to Mt. Emily Ale house where "Collander Films" was dressed to kill. Everyone was in great spirits and as predicted we packed the place. WHOOP!

Everyone of these films were wonderful, spectacular - kudos to these 48 hour warriors.

If you missed it last night - check it out at the Ale House today.

Pictures, Highlights, and Awards will be posted soon!

Only 2 Hours Till the Premiere

I have to say I am very excited to see what the teams have come up with. I hear snippets and rumours from people working on the projects and all of it sounds very intriguing and exciting. Here's to some great films being shown tonight!

Fratello del Mago - Positronic Films - FINISHED

We here at Positronic Films have completed a fantastic little western that will do for LGSFP 2009 what "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" did for a little film festival in Utah.

This has been a heck of a wild ride. I have been writing screenplays for over seven years, and have made a couple of little shorts. However this was the first time that I ever had to plan and execute. Wow! We planned in advance and had a finished script, storyboard and production schedule a week in advance. We were fortunate to get Nathan Smutz for our secondary actor and helper and he was invaluable to our team.

We shot in over 20 locations around the valley. We ended up with 167 clips of footage, almost 20 GB of data, shot on a ten-year-old Sony Handycam. I have recieved a total of five hours of sleep in the last two nights, and that was a luxury I almost couldn't afford.

Well, I will add more about this later today. Fratello del Mago has just finished rendering and it's ready to be in transit for delivery.

Romantic Comedy Still in Post

This is all I really have to say.  See you tonight!

2:22 am and the film is in the can.

It has been a bit of a battle managing to pull my film together. After multiple battery pack malfunctions and the first 3 shots of the film taking me nearly 24 of the 48 hours - we have managed to put all the images on the camera that we are going too. I just finished a session with MEGA BEARD getting them to put some serious score below the cloud of footage I have.


The wind decided to start howling as soon as I began shooting. So because I am tired and have to start editing I just have to say that I may incorporate the originally abandoned genres of "silent", "experimental", and my prescribed "drama". I am excited to cut this all up into some cohesive thoughts...

NOTE: As for the 4 - 7 minutes rule, seems that it just may take a little sacrifice, but you should save your current cut and then make a new one widdled down even further. I think it is important that we do our best to stay within the guidelines, but - first time around I am more concerned about a film being created - s I am eager to see them all.

Collander Films Makes An EPIC, by accident.

The pictures you see before you are the result of a 14 hour continous shoot that left the crew and cast haunted by ghoulish nightmares of mosquitos, sunburn, and ponds that contained flesh eating catfish. The result of this shoot and subsequent EPIC editing session is a film that must be seen to be believed. We arrive at our finished film with a conundrum facing us, however....our film has a running time of 15 minutes. We have chopped and chopped all that we can, any more cuts and the story would be lost to the etheral nonesense of jibberish.
We beleive that the suggested length was mentioned as 7 minutes, we have obviously missed that. Therefore we throw ourselves upon the mercy of the court. We ask only that we be allowed to show our film at the screening. We would accept being removed from contention for the festival or any other thoughts the Festival has. We truly apologize, on the pages it seemed so short and easy, once began though the journey took us further than we expected. If allowed to show our film we would also agree to go last so that any who do not wish to see such a long short film can depart. We shall not be offended. What say you fellow filmmakers? Will you forgive us in all of our coveralled glory? All we are guilty of is having to much fun!

The Horror ....The Horror

Collander Films finished principal photography last night or early this morning depending on your view. We had a great cast and crew that all gave their best work and probably hate me this morning for all of the insanity. Actually, they all seemed to have fun and great performances were captured and given. The herculean task of editing now begins and we are excited to see the dawn of the footage of VAMPYYR. Prepare yourselves.

On a side note, I did manage to visit the set of my nemesis Jason Crampton in overalls covered in animal waste. I then hugged him and made him smell like animal waste. Collander FTW!

Keep your eyes peeled here for some pictures of the HORROR.

Ahead of schedule? What?

I wasn't expecting this, but we are quite a bit ahead of schedule. I guess that's what happens when you've got a great team of people to work with. I have to thank my man Zack, who, when we realized we couldn't get into the location we were filming at (no, we didn't try to break in) actually went to his parents house and removed one of their windows so we could shoot through it in the parking lot. Huzzah for an awesome combination of innovation, and madness. We didn't get to film our big scene until much later than we thought we were going to, but we still finished when we needed to due to everyone doing an awesome job with their lines from the getgo. I forgot to eat anything all day, so I think I am going to put a lunch into the shooting schedule today. Hey, here's a picture from the set that is also being used in the movie.



In nemesis news, Brian Wallis stopped by our filming location in a sad attempt to disrupt filming (and also to deliver Alex Mitzenberg, whom I had asked to borrow; but mostly I think it was the disrupting thing) and was wearing nothing but soaking wet overalls. Strangest part is, I don't believe the overalls (or the wetness) are a part of his film. *shudder*

La Grande Summer Film Project 2009 PROMO

so the scooba do whop bop be da is a little after school specially - but a fun little PROMO worth passing along. Share it people.

kicked-off a scoche early!

Special thanks again to Joe and Sugars for providing us all the needed fuel to kick this event off. We had 20 folks in attendance and many more that just could not make it... all an all I say we have about 50 people lined up to be involved in the making of these films. Right on!

We tossed out shirts so keep an eye out (please feel free to contact us to purchase yours and support the project. ) Handed out stickers, marketing materials, miniDV tapes, gave a good pep talk and then shot some footage I plan to edit for the screening as a cool little intro.

Each team gave a brief summary of their film and introduced each other (brian wallace on the right - HORROR) and everyone got a chance to hook up with filmmakers and find a way to participate.

Teams will be posting blogs and tweets so check back often.

There will also be a neat little interview by Dusty Decker on www.lagrandelife.com sometime today which will be worth watching and sharing around to promote the project and other cool goings-ons.

Have a great shoot folks and again, thanks so much for the participation.

The BLOOD is ready to be SPILLED

Collander Films finds itself with a finished script. After the first few aborted attempts led to scripts that ballooned to a epic number of pages we finally made our choice and we are proud to announce that we will be making a horror film with chills, thrills, and a nod to the great Ed Wood. Realizing that we have about 24 hours to actually shoot this baby, we decided to pass on the mad idea of a creature feature that required expensive and time consuming make up and make a film that puts a quirky spin on Ed Wood style films of the 1950's. We are proud to announce our title "Vampire Pioneers From Lake Terror". Now that you have started breathing again try and shake off that feeling that your eyes will never again read a better series of words and prepare yourself to be amazed.

As an additional notice we were sad to hear that the Big Productions suffered a set back when my nemesis ,Jason Crampton, wet himself due to the pure awesome that hit him IN THE FACE after reading the title of our film. Our hearts go out to him from our hot tub filled with handsome male celebrities.

Romantic Comedy, at the Starting Line

Well I think we're on the right track.  I'm lucky enough to have Jamie Gustavson (local artist and funny girl extraordinaire) on my team, and when I told her our genre she scratched her chin for a few then said "Well, I have this little book I made..."

So after 30 seconds with this 6-sentence illustrated book, I'm sold.  We'll shoot a scene for each page in the book.  It's a little bit cute, a good amount of romantic, kinda sad, and pretty effed up.

It's perfect.

But I'm still a little pissed about getting another mushy category (see last year).

Nothing like coming down to the last minute!

So, I don't know if you know this or not, but we totally have to film a movie tomorrow! Wow! Awesome! We didn't have word one on paper until yesterday afternoon, at which point it all came spilling out in about an hour and a half; watch your step, plot holes surely abound!

We were having the same problem as Jennings. Crime is so broad. Did we want to do some sort of caper? A heist? A Con? Espionage? Anyway, we settled on something that we think is pretty cool. We're hoping to find the perfect actor for a really specific part from the talent pool, so we'll see what happens there.

The only thing that has made me feel better about our lack of productivity in the last couple weeks is the fact that our spy has returned reports of my nemesis, Brian Wallis (of Collander Films) spending all week sitting in a hot tub full of dudes for hours at a time, drinking cheap wine (from a box!).

We went out location scouting last night, and found (we think) everywhere we need to find, and (hopefully) assembled all the props. Tomorrow = scary!

Drama: Preproduction Update

The story and concept has been developed and we are awaiting to see who our casting options may be. We are searching around for some locations and are on the right track... trying to leave some room for the sponsored location that we will be given on Wednesday.

Drama is always a tough one - for one, it is very vague and can be done from various different angles - which makes it hard to focus. Also telling the story of the rise and fall of a character in 4 - 7 minutes is a difficult feat, but I love a challenge.

I work visually and like to prepare myself by surrounding myself with imagery, sounds, and moods that will accompany the project. I have MEGA BEARD RECORDS thinking about a dramatic score and cannot wait to see what they have come up with.

Tara Pfister-Minogue (also my wife) will be participating as a actor in the film as well as helping to shape the overall story and process. I am considering some big things... that may or may not be able to be done in the time line.

Needless to say my preproduction time has been spent more on organizing the whole project and not specifically on my film yet... but that will come. At noon on wednesday I will be focused on creating a great short film.

I did however create a mock poster and I think I have come up with a title. "The Strange Attractor". Happy shooting!~