sleep deprivation « 12 Films. 12 Weeks. There are worse ways to spend a summer.

Our Latest Film-Race Entry: “Thirsty Work”!

April 29, 2010 at 7:19 pm | Posted in Keith Boynton | Leave a comment
Tags: boardwalk, champions, Coney Island, Film Racing, race, racing, sleep deprivation, tracking shots, victory

Another Film Race has come and gone, and I’m just now feeling recovered enough to blog about it. Perhaps even more so than “The Queen Bee of Mushroomtown,” this was a surreal and wonderful experience. The hours flew by, the team clicked seamlessly; we became a lean, mean, pizza-fueled filmmaking machine. And you know what? I think we made a really good movie. We call it “Thirsty Work,” and we can’t wait to let it loose upon the world.

Speaking of which, come to this Saturday’s 7:30 screening at NYU’s Cantor Film Center! We’ll be there, and we’d love to see you. Tickets and details are available here.

“Thirsty Work” will be posted in this space sometime next week. Till then, here are some pictures to tide you over! I hope they capture a little piece of the experience. It was a magical time.

(It may be noted that our beloved Clint Byrne doesn’t appear in these photos. That’s because Clint was too busy taking photos to pose for any. Thanks, Clint!)

Brigitte Choura and James Fauvell croon their hearts out on the pier before dawn

James Creque preaches hellfire while surrounded by it

The sun rises. We keep right on shooting.

Going about our work in the shadow of Coney Island's famed Parachute Jump

Yes, that's water from the Atlantic Ocean. No, Mike's not very happy about it.

Are you intrigued yet?

Done with shooting! One happy crew.

Mike's innovative credits-designing posture

James Creque sleeps the sleep of the recently drenched.

Two cousins enjoy some family editing time.

With a few hours left to turn in the movie, the remaining team enjoys a short break on the roof.

… and we got the film in with time to spare! We’re getting pretty good at this. Should that worry me?

Posted by Keith

Our Penultimate Film — “Hero by Proxy” — is Up!

August 21, 2009 at 8:57 am | Posted in Michael Redfield | 5 Comments
Tags: apples, film noir, nudity, r-rated, sleep deprivation

CONTENT ADVISORY: The MPAA would give our film an R-Rating for Hard Language, Adult Themes and Activity, and Sexually- Oriented Nudity.

NSFW, dude.

(best part, now you’ll really watch the movie)

Also available on YouTube: Part 1. Part 2

(9/3/09): Also available in black and white!

I shouldn’t feel great right now. I haven’t seen my baby for eight days, the first time away since she was born in March. Tonight was the second all-nighter of the week. I’ve had a caffeine/exhaustion headache for the better part of three days. But I do feel great…my friends and I just made a movie . We built something that works all on its own.

Keith asked me last month to come out here from LA to direct one of his 12 in 12 movies. I’d scored Captivated and Spirits already, and everyone on the project seemed like good people to me. We decided to plan the movie kind of the way we planned scenes in improv comedy when Keith and I did GAD’S together at Amherst: choose a location, find some actors, get a title from the audience and see what you come up with in a day’s time.

He and Mike wanted to be able to act together, and since one or both of them has been behind the camera all summer, had never had the chance. Fittingly, we ended up writing a script where two characters each have their own storyline, and spend the better part of a night away from the other…

What resulted was a 7-page script with more locations than was wise, and the difficult task of shooting enough material in a way that you could manage to tell two stories in under 10 minutes. At that we failed. “Hero” runs an almost even 13min. As for the stories, that’s for you to see and tell us if we got the job done.

Being a director, you get to be a proxy hero. Your name goes first in the credit crawl, everyone looks to you for your opinion, beautiful young women fawningly pour you bottomless cups of coffee…. But really, you are getting credit where credit is only partially due. I’ve thanked everyone who worked on this movie already, but I have to raise another cold one to all of them. This trip to New York would have turned out very differently had I not had the benefit of their help and their company.

Did you notice I wove the title of the film into the tapestry of my blogpost?

Now stop reading and (re)watch the damn movie.