web site

it's been a very active and productive weekend. friday, i spent most of the day making travel arrangements for bob, tom and andrew for the screening in june, and i also started to design the invitations as well. the rest of the weekend was spent finishing up the invites and working on the new website - and i'm glad to say that a preliminary version of the site is currently up and running:

praxis.damagedfilms.com

as with anything else, there are a ton of little tweeks and things to fix to the site, and i'm planning to add a lot more cool and interesting stuff on there as well, but at least the current version has the trailer on there and a bunch of cool photos from when we were shooting the film. what i'm finding out tho, is that the site always seems to look really great on my home computer, but when i try to load it on a different computer, things don't exactly come out identically the same. anyhoo, i'm sure over time that i'll be able to fix most of the current website issues.

this week, i plan to mail out the official invites to the screening, and also check out the current version of the film. i'll need to reserve the subrental of the digibeta deck for the final output of the film soon, as the tech rehearsal for the film at the AFI in in the middle of may. sounds like a lot to do, and it is, but fortunately, it's all coming together quite well. and it's nice to feel like iive got a good rhythm going...

now i have to decide who to invite to the screening, which is about as much fun as making invitations to a wedding - which in-laws to invite or not invite...

fun stuff...

grindhouse

today, i head to a meeting with the event coordinator at the american film institute in silver spring to finalize a couple of things for the cast and crew screening in june. i'm looking forward to this, and it'll be awesome to see the film on the big screen. hopefully, this will be the starting point for the film's next phase: applying to festivals and putting the film out there for all to see. but of course, before i get too ahead of myself, there's still a ton of things that need to get done before june: posters, invites, after party, website, press kits...tons of stuff...but it's all good, and it's very cool to be at this point of the movie making process.

last weekend, me and paul got a chance to see grindhouse, the rodriguez/tarantino 3 hr plus epic and homage to the exploitation films of the seventies. though it is a bit long, and kinda gets a little boring in the middle, the first film is a straight up zombie gore flick, and the final sequence in tarantino's film is absolutely incredible. in the age of CG and computer effects, back in the day, stunts and effects were done with real people in real danger. old school...needless to say, i loved the film. i thought it was incredible. even though this film has nothing to do with praxis per say, it's still cool to see movies that are genuine good movies - seems hard to do in this day and age.

so, my goal for the weekend is to put together the trailer for the website, and finish some of the other press kit stuff, and maybe even start work on the website.

back to work it is!

le samourai

plugging away at all the things i have to work on: i finished the first version of the poster for the movie, and i like what i was able to come up with. i'd like to make at least one more alternative poster, but for now, i like the simplicity of the first one - i think it represents the movie quite well.

so, me and paul have re-vamped the damaged films web site, and are just starting to make a dedicated praxis website. there are still some minor tweeks to the damaged films website, but i'm glad that me and paul are happy with the results. i've also been working on putting together a 2min trailer for the film, which is a lot more difficult than i initially thought. because the film is so cinematic and not a lot of dialogue, capturing the essence of the film in 2 minutes is pretty hard to do. but i hope to have something by the end of the week.

i got a chance to catch up with both tom and andrew over the weekend, and it sounds like both of them are doing fairly well. andrew just completed a pilot web-tv series called zero, and hopefully it'll get picked up. tom just completed his own website www.tommacy.com and i looks like that both tom and andrew will be working on another pilot tv series that's supposed to be shot in new york in may. i'm glad to hear that both of them are doing well in the acting careers.

i also got and email announcement for the official release of bob massey's new album for the Gena Rowlands Band. i'm glad that bob is doing well too...

anyhoo, me and paul got a chance to watch Le Samourai, a french noir film from the sixties by the director Jean-Pierre Melville. it's definitely a cool little film, a precursor to Blade Runner, and a very beautifully shot movie about an assassin. i also dig the way it captures paris in the sixties - a very stylish and slick film with not a lot of dialogue. tho, the film doesn't have much of a story, the overall visuals are what carry it. if ya haven't seen it, put it on your netflix list.

so, for now, it's back to finishing up the press materials and organizing the screening at the afi.

whew...