Tuesday, September 09, 2008

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE!



TwirlyBoy Walks Away With 2 Awards at the San Jose 48 Hour Film Festival

















"Most Gratuitous Merchandising Ploy Award"















"Community Player Award" for Evan Donn"


Here's what the judges had to say:


Kudos 2 Evan for being a team player to IDOM and a community player to San Jose.

CONGRATULATIONS IDOM! In honor of our 2 awards.

Friday, September 05, 2008

The Nominees for the best ....

From: sanjose48hfp@gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 8:32 PM
To: 48 Hour Film Project Participants
Subject: San Jose 48HFP Awards Ceremony Nominations Announced!


...hello Players and Team. The judges have deliberated. Then they've reconsidered, and then they arm-wrestled to resolve some of the finer points of the craft. At last we have their results. The nominations for awards in each of our major categories are being announced here, and the final winner will be announced on Sunday night at the Highlights Night and Awards Ceremony.

The Event
So first of all, let me tell you that the event will be held at the Media Center in Palo Alto. Here are the complete details:

San Jose 48 Hour Film Project presents...

Highlights Night and Awards Ceremony
Sunday, Sept 7, 7:00pm-9:30pm
Media Center
900 San Antonio Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
Admission: $5

At the event, we will show many of the films from this year's crop, a couple of surprise special features, and we'll present the awards along with comments from the judges. This is a great night to "close the loop" on this year's event. See the films one more time, hear what the judges and the audience thought of them, and socialize with the other filmmakers and teams. It will be a grand night.

Nominations
Nominees are listed in alphabetical order, and you should be aware that your film may be up for a special award or another honor that is not listed in the nominations. There are still some surprises to come.

Best Film:
The Animals
Bodbrane, Wizard of Spas
The Best Thing
High Stakes Hooky
Lost and Found

Best Acting:
The Animals - Mark McGrath
Firecracker - Abigail Wray Bennett
Firecracker - Jordan Dobbs Rosa
Attrition - James Davis
Marble Bag - Tom Cokenias

Best Direction:
The Animals
Bodbrane, Wizard of Spas
Lost and Found
Nobody Gets Me
Twirly Boy

Best Music/Score:
The Animals
Firecracker
High Stakes Hooky
Nobody Gets Me
Twirly Boy

Best Cinematography:
The Animals
Attrition
Dia De Los Dead
Firecracker
Twirly Boy

Additional awards do not have nominees, but take a look at these and see if you think your team may have qualified for one of them. Awards will be given for special achievement in several areas. These include:

Most Gratuitous Merchandising Ploy
Best Team Splash Sequence
Best Credits/Titles
Best Marketing Collateral
Community Player Award

All right. There's a lot more to say and we all know that the art is to say just enough. I've probably already gone beyond that limit today.

---v

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Sporting the GREEN SCREEN behind the scenes of TwirlyBoy




Green screen technology is the basis of the effects seen in everything from the latest Hollywood blockbusters to our local, national and international weather forecast. The idea is simple. If you shoot a video with a single coloured backdrop (blue or green is often used) you can make that colour transparent - replacing it with any other video clip, graphic or still image.



Use any single colour, flat object as a screen.


Last school year, Hollywood Blake (as he likes to refer to himself), a young 8th grade student of mine showed interest in filmmaking and was very interested in the concept of green screens. I posted these shots of the green screen especially for you, Hollywood Blake.

With green screen, it's simple to superimpose anything or anyone into any shot. You can transport yourself anywhere, as we did with the character played by our crew member, Tom Flowers.































Since this was a 48 hour project and we didn't have the time or funds to get these shots in Beijing, China, we shot Tom in front of a green screen.


Check out Tom Flowers' character having a telephone conversation from Beijing.

'TwirlyBoy' Standard Definition - 56Mb MP4

'TwirlyBoy' High Definition (720p) - 225Mb MP4