We just went live yesterday with a sneak preview clip of the first little bit of the movie. It shows the animated opening, the documentary intro and the introduction of the digital janitor. Please share!
It’s also a part of the Celtx Seeds program, where we’ve additionally posted a little quick-and-dirty interview with a couple of us (edited by Anthony). We focused on a tips/how-to approach rather than, y’know, our motivations and artistic aesthetic. Not that that’s irrelevant, but since Celtx is a scriptwriting app we figured most of the people watching would be fellow filmmakers.
Our plan, as you can see laid out at the newly refreshed ghostswithshitjobs.com (thanks Sean!), is to release short introductions each month of each of the main characters to keep the momentum from the trailer release rolling.
In November we are going to be screening it for a handful of industry-savvy people to give us some insight in packaging it for distro/broadcast/traditional sales. In January I’m being flown to Sundance (on videogame biz, not movie-related) and I’m hoping to maybe set up some meetings with distributors. Any feedback or ideas people have about this stuff is appreciated as it’s totally new territory for me!
Holy frijoles. Looks awesome.
I love that you tarted up the Chinese talk show with fx in the background. That shoots the whole production from B- to A-movie like a rocket swinging around a massive body to slingshot out of the solar system. It really was a weak point and now it’s super-great. I might have taken out that second chair entirely but that’s practically a subliminal difference.
I can’t believe the pacing of the film itself, so deliberate and kitchen-sink within each shot but the cuts make it feel like an action movie somehow. Don’t know how you did it but I’m happy you did.
Like: cutting from janitor looking at visine to him grabbing coat and leaving frame, such a great edit though totally wrong technically. That’s how things oughtta be.
I DEFINITELY think your pull quotes from positive reviews should be on that front page, around the trailer, in the white space (ignore your designer’s tears). I’m gonna send that link out and it would be great if big-time types saw some bigger-time endorsements, in case they are too busy to look at more than a fraciton of a second.
A producer I knew once told me that the problem with sending out tapes (this was before internet video) was that people watch them in their office, with a ringing phone, people coming in etc. Then they always comment that the film feels “choppy.” That’s why private screenings for distributors, at any expense, always work out better than letting people watch it on their own busy time.
I imagine that problem is worse now, since folks bring their ipads to the private screening – but it’s an important thought.
Hey Flick– thanks a ton! We *were* totally sweating the doc scenes (you were right to hammer on it a year ago) but knew that the FX would put that extra bit of polish on it to sell it.
Good point on the pull quotes.
What do you mean by the phrase kitchen-sink?
Ummm… let’s see… how to explain… Kitchen sink drama refers to a certain type of British drama, i think from the 50’s, where action archetypically takes place at the kitchen sink… it’s a real-time type of pacing, very realistic and humanist concerns, gritty acting and casting.
So having that type of pacing in the action itself, but cutting fast to keep it moving, is awesome. Maybe I don’t watch enough TV and everybody does that, but it’s still a great achievement. Pacing is everything in film.
(Not to be confused with a kitchen sink movie, which Richard Linklater explained to me as a film into which you put all your ideas that have been hanging around without a film to go in, i.e. you throw in everything but the kitchen sink)
Of course, why would anyone explain anything when there’s wikipedia to do it for us (sigh)… They say the kitchen sink was a reference to a specific painting of a kitchen sink!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism