Another award!

I just received an email saying that the commercial we made for the Best Buy competition won a runner up prize! We were somewhere between 6th and 10th place, it didn't say exactly where we placed, but that means we won a video camera. We'll put it up for sale soon and add that money to our Bad is Bad budget.

On a side note, that means we've won a prize in every video competition we've entered this year (4 out of 4).

SCBFF results

We won an award! Granted it wasn't for an actual aspect of filmmaking (we were runner up for best incorporation of business elements), but we walked away without about $1,000 so I'm not complaining. The Big Idea started off the whole festival, and we had some good competition, including the Oscar nominated short film Kavi and a hillarious short film called Lemon Men which actually beat out Kavi for the best picture award. It was a really fun event and we enjoyed many of the other shorts. The prize money is also a big help for our budget for our feature film, we won't have any problems raising the rest of the money now.

SCBFF News and an Announcement

A few things currently going on...

First off, some good/bad news: an Oscar nominated short film will also be playing at the Southern California Business Film Festival. So while on the one hand it's an honor to have our short film The Big Idea being screened alongside an Academy Award nominated film, we also have no chance at winning any prizes now! Oh well, still pretty cool, and now that the pressure is off, I'm sure Chris and I will be able to enjoy the festival much more.

Secondly, I'm officially announcing one of the lead actors in our upcoming feature film Bad is Bad...drum roll please....local Richmond actor Bill Brock! And what better way to introduce him than with his recent interview from Richmond.com where he was in the Actor's Spotlight - Read the interview here (and look for the Bad is Bad blurb!). We're very excited to have Bill on board for this movie, in which he will be playing George Freeman, a suburban family man whose day doesn't turn out quite how he expected...

In other news, I added up the official budget for Bad is Bad this past weekend, and we're on track to make the money we need in time without too much trouble (and if we're short, well...that's what family members are for!). Also, we've been delayed on the storyboards because we looked through the script again and ended up making a whole 'nother draft! Lots of work to do, but that's how we like it!

Storyboards and updates...

Over the past couple of weeks Chris and I have been watching many movies that were shot in a similar way to how we'll be filming Bad is Bad. We've been doing this as research before we make the storyboards, because we want to film it using long shots with few cuts, and mostly on a tripod. This is the sort of style we were moving towards with The Big Idea, but I think the shot selection on that movie wasn't as good as it could have been. To give you an idea of what Bad will be like, we've been analyzing movies such as No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Funny Games, and Fargo. We still have many more to go through, but Chris and I are going to start drawing up the storyboards this weekend. This process will probably take around a month.

A numbered, organized storyboard list is essential when filming a movie out of order. We started storyboarding way back on our 2007 movie Croatan for some of the action scenes. After that we've storyboarded every short film we've worked on because it saves so much time on set and keeps the continuity when shooting individual shots or scenes out of order, and sometimes weeks apart. That's going to happen a lot during the filming of Bad just for logistical reasons.

In other news, it turns out we won't know if we won anything in the Best Buy competition until around the same time as the SCBFF screening (February 21). So Chris and I will definitely be anxious over those few days as we wait to see if we won anything in two separate competitions.

Also, I just got a new job as a video editor for the art school at USC. You can guess where most of the money from that will be going...yep...Bad is Bad.

Some good news....

Yesterday I received two emails.

One said that The Big Idea was accepted into the Southern California Business Film Festival! So now we just have to wait until February 21, when the competitive screening will take place here at USC. Hopefully we can win a prize!

The second email said that we've moved on to the next stage of judging for our Best Buy commercial we made for their contest. On Monday we will know if we win anything!

Chris and I also finished the new draft of the script last night, and are very pleased with it. The next step in the process will be a big one - storyboarding!