Animation!
Last week Jennie Tarr and I did a photo shoot with Jenny Woodward for what I hope will eventually be a very quick photo animation technique. Here’s a preview.
The End of an Era
The Two Boots Pioneer Theater on Avenue A and 3rd St. in Manhattan is one hell of a cool theater. For 4 years, Ray Privett has been the man behind the curtain keeping it the weirdest and most experimental of New York’s first run-theaters. I first met Ray when he gave Richard Sylvarnes’s The Cloud of Unknowing a week-long run, guaranteeing a review in the New York Times. At the time I was the brand-new head of distribution at the brand-new company The Possible Films Collection. Only after weeks of emailing him did I learn that he was my friend Randy Bell’s new roommate. We went on to do a sold-out screening of Hal Hartley’s short films, where we sold a ton of DVDs, a two-week run of The Girl From Monday, and most importantly, an evening of my own short films called “Kyle Gilman: Some Success but Mostly Failure” which featured the world premiere of Two Night Stand. I’ve never screened my films together like that at any other time, and it was really gratifying to do it with such a surprising and appreciative audience.
And just to connect me to The Pioneer even closer, The First Sundays Comedy Film Festival moved there a few years ago. They were the first people in NYC to show any of my films. They even showed the Bad Webcam Sex video as part of The Pioneer’s online video series (after some other online video series decided they didn’t want to share their screening slot earlier in the week).
But after 4 years of a job that never seems to take a break, Ray is leaving The Pioneer. He will be missed. I hope he has a great time with his new projects, and I hope The Pioneer doesn’t suck without him.
3 Films at Sundance ’08!
It turns out I worked on 3 films that are premiering at Sundance this year. I knew that Blind Date and Choke would be there, but I just discovered today that Quid Pro Quo will be there too. I haven’t seen the final versions of Choke or Quid Pro Quo, but I’ve seen Blind Date quite a few times and it’s very good.
So far I don’t have anything lined up that would be eligible for Sundance ’09, but the year is still young.
2 For Tuesday
Even though it’s New Year’s Day, it’s still 2 For Tuesday. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk. I hate about 25% of classic rock songs and when I listen to the radio in the shower I only have time for 2 or 3 songs. So if Rush comes on 104.3 on Tuesday morning they lose a listener for 8 minutes. But this morning I got two great Zeppelin songs off the back wall, so it was cool.
Happy New Year to my half-dozen readers.
New Gear
Man oh man do I love new toys. Yesterday I picked up the Behringer Podcastudio Firewire (note the German-style compound word). Now, let me be clear. I have no interest in podcasting. I tried listening to podcasts back when they were all the rage and I didn’t see the appeal. I prefer to read stuff while listening to music. The Podcastudio is just a nice, ridiculously cheap way to start a home recording studio. It comes with a microphone, an adorable little mixer and a firewire interface that brings audio into the computer via a higher quality method than the line level input on my sound card. I’m starting production soon on an animated web series and I need a nice, simple way to record the voices without spending too much money. This is a lot better than my original, misguided plan to use $15 teleconferencing headsets and Skype. I spent a few days researching the available low-end pro audio equipment and I kept coming back to the various components of the Podcastudio. At first I thought I’d just try one or two of them, but the bundle was too good a deal.
My favorite thing so far is the mixer. It has two microphone inputs and two stereo line-level inputs along with tape in and out. It has just slightly more than I need in a mixer at this point. I’m planning to record two voices simultaneously so the inputs are perfect. My main disappointment is the 3-foot XLR cable for the microphone. I want to get that thing as far away from my computer as possible so I’m going to pick up some longer cables, and of course an additional microphone.
So far I’ve only done a little bit of testing but the sound quality is pretty good. There’s a small, but distinct amount of high-frequency noise coming from the mic pre-amps on the mixing board. The microphone seems acceptable without being overwhelmingly great or anything. I’ll probably pick up another one. The headphones are below average, with a tinny, echoey sound, but I appreciate the circumaural design. They will be acceptable for voice monitoring but they’re definitely the weak link in the system.
Fay Grim DVD Extras (2007)
The Making of ‘Fay Grim’ or: How Do You Spell Espionage? and the trailer I edited for festival promotion are both available on the Fay Grim DVD. You can see the full trailer below along with an excerpt from the “making of” documentary.
Fay Grim Festival Trailer
[qt:http://www.15framespersecond.com/videos/kg/FG_CannesTrailer500.mov https://www.kylegilman.net/videos/500by295-Poster.mov 500 295]
Excerpt from The Making of Fay Grim or: How do You Spell Espionage?
[qt:http://www.15framespersecond.com/videos/kg/MakingFGExcerptWeb2.mov https://www.kylegilman.net/videos/500by391-Poster.mov 500 391]
Is This The Pizzaman? (1999)
When I was in high school, my friend Taj Musco made a movie called The Pizzaman. He asked me to play a series of pizza delivery boys who are brutally murdered by a pizzacutter-wielding psycho. We first met at the Mount Wachusett Community College Summer Drama Camp when we were 8 years old, so he knew I had some serious acting chops. I was on set for 2 days of shooting, and had a blast. When I saw it several months later I was really shocked. It was like a real movie! It was stylish, funny, scary, and 30 minutes long!
A few years later, The Pizzaman won an award for being the best damn movie on Cable Access TV or something like that. Taj and I went down to the ceremony with the idea of making some sort of behind-the-scenes movie. We staged a goofy event when Taj got the award that was based on the “soy bomb” incident that nobody remembered at the time
and even fewer people remember it now. But that bit of wackiness inspired a story of behind-the-scenes intrigue. We wrote a fun script called “Is This The Pizzaman?” The title and the man supposedly making the documentary were both inspired by “This is Spinal Tap” but the structure was a lot more like the Christopher Guest movies. We shot an amazing array of elements over a few weeks (on S-VHS!!). We spent the summer editing (tape to tape!!!) and came up with a companion piece that isn’t quite as exciting as The Pizzaman, but is certainly a lot sillier. I made Camera Noise two years later, and you can see some of the beginnings of the arrogance of the “Kyle” character here. Although if I remember correctly, my main inspiration for my interview style was Quentin Tarantino, who talks very quickly and animatedly. I went the opposite direction in Camera Noise, going for the extremely dry tone I prefer now.
Movies Get Pirated
Michael Moore’s new movie “Sicko” got posted on the Internet before it was released. Why is this news? Because Michael Moore and the Weinstein Company are making it news. I’m sure there was a press release put out by the Weinstein Company, and Moore’s going around claiming it was an inside job. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was made from a DVD screener. I don’t know the specifics of the distribution plans, but I find it hard to believe that there were no DVD screeners available for the film, considering that it’s already played at Cannes and it’s coming out in theaters so soon. Then today there were more articles wondering if the film’s box office would be hurt by all this crazy piracy. The figure mentioned in the articles is 4000 downloads on Piratebay. 4000! And “as many as 600” saw it on YouTube! Do reporters even stop to think about what they’re writing? That many people watching a movie online before it’s released is a story only because the numbers are so small. Hell, according to mininova, 2,000 people are downloading Fay Grim right now. Fay Grim was pirated 2 weeks before it opened and that’s a movie much lower on the radar than Sicko. Trust me, Sicko will do just fine even with all these dirty pirates around.
Truth @ 15 Frames Per Second (2006)
One of the first fictional video blogs, started months before that other, more famous fictional video blog, “Truth @ 15 Frames Per Second” follows a young couple’s difficulties dealing with a long distance relationship.
Current TV commissioned a short film about the series and its reception, which is available here.
The most popular episodes are embedded below. Visit the original site for the whole story.
Episode #2 “Me and My Girlfriend”
Episode #11 “Webcam Sex”
Episode #16 “Discovery”
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