Film camps galore

Notes from watching a few of the ShootOut Boulder films at the library last fall, just after making our own first attempt at a film:

• Great shot of a shadowed guy opening a sliding metal door. (I said so in the interlude and they were so grateful. "Yeah, we worked really hard to get that shot," one of the filmmakers said.)


• Many concepts in the stories were funny ("I lost my balls in a dice game," "Jords," -- wtf?) but ran out of steam by the end (perhaps because of not having a script or not editing the script?).


• Loved the locations we locals know spliced together in impossible ways -- simply hilarious!


• Great title: "Waffles at Noon."


• Having seen a bunch of these valiant efforts, I still believe a little "outtakes" section in the credits would be a great opportunity for a unique close.


• Having a solid, rehearsed story and script is key. (Or maybe if the actors really clicked or you had improv artists run with a storyline... oooh, you could recruit improv folks specifically. That would be a hoot! They would love the publicity, and the experience, and ...it's April -- that gives improv folks plenty of time to plan a film production into their schedules for this October, right? Hmmm....)


• Sound engineering -- it's worth doing this right up front.


• Next time I make a little film, I will give the kids/people all the jobs they like. They loved that. The more, the better. The collective enterprise thing really works for a film -- everyone wants to see the end result.
  

Shoot-In Boulder

You read it here second, perhaps, but the news is on the street: I am going to make a movie. I want to toss some of these ideas out there and see what we can come up with. There will be a list of required elements (specific locations, items, scene requirements, for example). But we will have to (or I will, depending on whether anyone is game) come up with the script, the story, the actors, the scenes, the fun. I think it would be cool to make a tiny trailer up front for the film, and then make the remaining six minutes of film like a soap opera scene that catches you up on everything. I see the good-bad-guy split along the lines of the patients and doctors at a hospital against the drug companies who are pushing their toxic products (and secret military experiments) on the doctors. That's a lot to pull off in seven minutes, but we could make it look like one of those long, breathless trailers for some huge melodrama, all in great-quality black-and-white with technicolor titles like back in the 'forties. We have lots of kids on the block, maybe they'll want to participate, too. Would it be cute or terrible to enact all this with child actors? I can't wait to see what happens next.