Blog-o-STIFF

STIFF Nights May - Big City Dick

Moby (dj set) Pre-Sale!

Moby Presale

Those who have been paying attention to the Blog-o-STIFF already know it, but for those who don’t, STIFF 2008 will feature none other than MOBY (dj set).  We are very excited to be partnering with USC Events for the show on Sunday, June 8^th at Neumos.  There will be a special presale starting at 10AM on Tuesday, May 13^th for all of you folks.  The rest of the world doesn’t get to buy until Friday. 

Follow this link:

And use the password:  lastnight

Moby was a natural and obvious choice for STIFF not only because he is a fantastic artist, but because of what he has done for the film-community with MobyGratis.

Weekend Film Challenge contestants will also be including music from the MobyGratis library into their short films, which Moby will be judging.  Moby’s non-profit project, MobyGratis, has currently been used thousands of times by film students and independent film directors around the world.  Outside of MobyGratis, Moby has had his songs in several dozens of different tv/film outlets and recently scored the film Southland Tales. 

Moby is currently on tour for his latest CD Release, Last Night, released April 1^st, (4 stars, Rolling Stone). Last Night shows Moby returning to the dance floor with force, after the singer-songwriter moves of 2005's Hotel album.

LAFFHOLE back at CHAC

Many of the STIFF 2008 afterparties are being put on by members of the People's Republic of Komedy.  Last night was a return of sorts for their regular Wednesday night show, LAFFHOLE.  After a successful run at the lower level of the Capitol Hill Arts Center, they moved the show to Chop Suey (A STIFF Licks 2008 venue) for a period of time.  As the show continues to grow in popularity, they once again moved back to CHAC, but this time to the spacious upstairs (Another STIFF 2008 venue).  Last night was the first night back at CHAC.  Here, Kevin Hyder (host of the STIFF 2008 Closing party) takes us back into the green room to see what really goes on behind the scenes at LAFFHOLE.  If you wat to see more, you should check out the show, every Wednesday Night at 9PM.

Final Notifications

The final notifications for all filmmakers went out yesterday.  As a thorougly rejected filmmaker myself, this is an ironic time of the festival cycle for me.  We have had a lot of responses from filmmakers ranging from "You guys suck!" to "Darn, I'll try again next year".  I appreciate all of these emotions.  Please understand that no matter what, filmmaker communication is one of our highest priorities and notifications are a point of pride for us.  If for some reason, you have not received an email or phone call from our programming staff, please send an email to submissions (at) trueindependent (dot) org and we will try to get to the bottom of the problem.  We are also always on the lookout for suggestions to improve the process.  Any feedback you can give us is definitely appreciated. 

Thanks,

Clint

Bad News and (WAY) Better News!

The first time I had a produced DVD that I could take around to stores it was a pretty nerve wracking experience.  It was always a goal of mine to be able to walk ino a record store and see my DVD on a shelf, but I wasn’t sure of the process.  I didn’t realize just how simple it was since it was all so new.  It was pretty exciting to have a piece of plastic that actually represented finished work and I’ll never forget how good I felt after coming out of the first store that said that they would put it on the shelf (Sonic Boom in Ballard).  I’ll also never forget the old lady who almost hit me backing her t-bird out of a parking space while I was walking across the street.  I probably had my head in the clouds and wasn’t watching.  She pulled the Marlboro out of her mouth long enough to call me an “asshole”.  It was a good experience followed up by a cruddy (although in retrospect, laughable) experience.    Today, I had the same thing happen on a much grander scale.

First, the cruddy experience:  We lost a sponsor.  After working with Victory Studios for the past couple years, I was informed today that they wouldn’t be donating a prize for this year’s Weekend Film Challenge.  He told me that it wasn’t anything that we had done.  He had “Gone to the wall for me, but couldn’t get his boss to agree”.  They were “reevaluating how they sponsored film festivals”.  It reminded me of getting dumped in high-school.  A very grown up, film festival sponsorship version of the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech.  But, they are still giving a 15% discount on rental gear for contestants.

It was a bummer, but to be honest I just couldn’t get upset about it and I still can’t.  Because about 30 minutes prior, I had gotten some INCREDIBLE news.  A special celebrity judge had signed on and he was also providing a one-of a kind prize of his own.   Maybe you’ve heard of him? 

That’s right!  You’re hearing it here first.  Moby will be judging this year’s Weekend Film Challenge and each member of the winning team will get a STIFF 2008 poster signed by Moby.  Oh yeah…  He is also doing a concert as part of STIFF 2008 (Sunday, June 8^th at Neumos).  You might be asking yourself why Moby would be interested in STIFF. 

Ever since college," says Moby, "I have had friends and acquaintances in the worlds of indie, experimental and non-profit film. Their biggest complaint has been that licensing music for low-budget films is almost always incredibly difficult.  With that in mind I started MobyGratis. The goal is to provide free music for independent, experimental, and non-profit filmmakers.  I hope that somehow this will enable filmmakers to spend their time making films and not calling up record companies trying to license music."

The third wrinkle in this year’s Weekend Film Festival will be that each team is going to use a track from Moby Gratis in their film.  It is all incredibly exciting.  Stay tuned for more details.  The WFC kicks off on Monday.  We still have room for a team or two.  If you want to sign up, email filmchallenge (at) trueindependent.org with your roster.

I know what you are thinking…

“Your website says that filmmakers will be notified by April 15^th…  WTF is the holdup?!  I haven’t heard anything yet!  Why don’t you guys have your shit together?”

Believe me, I understand your frustration and we have been doing our best to answer emails from filmmakers wondering what the heck is going on.  Rest assured that we have been notifying accepted filmmakers and trying to lock down the print details and hope to have all filmmakers notified by the end of the week.  BUT…  Just because you haven’t been notified yet doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be getting a rejection email on Friday.  There have been a few strange and wonderful developments recently, that I can’t announce quite yet, which have opened up some up some additional screening slots and we need to get everything 100% locked down before we send out the rejections.  A couple of you still have legitimate hope for another day or so.

If you haven’t gotten a phone call yet, there is a pretty good chance that your email is going to carry some bad news. No matter what I write here, it isn’t probably won’t change your opinion of me, but just know that there are some really good films that we weren’t able to screen for a variety of reasons.   Just like casting or editing a movie, some difficult decisions have to be made when programming a festival.  Some movies seem just a little too similiar to other movies that we are screening, some are great, but just need a little tighter editing.  Some are excellent quality and seem perfect for SIFF, but just aren’t a great fit for STIFF.  In my dreams I see Carl Spence and Brian Shelley in some dimly lit parking garage exchanging unmarked paper bags full of these types of DVD’s like captured hostages in a cold war era film. 

I’ll close with these two pearls of uninvited advice…  Don’t Quit!  No matter how many times you get rejected by film festivals, keep making movies.  This is a pretty subjective business and sometimes festival acceptance is little more than the luck of having the right screener grab your DVD out of a bin.  Thank you so much for submitting your work to us and please keep us in mind when you finish future projects as we would love to see them.   We are a lot more willing to grant waiver requests to filmmakers who have submitted to us in the past and paid entry fees than we are to spammers.  Second, make sure to check your spam filters.  Sometimes notifications get lost in them.

Thanks Again,

Clint

Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival

Last Saturday night was the third annual Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival.  Hats off to Laura Wright and all of the organizers for the success.  The last two years, I have had friends make films for the festival (Sean McBride and the rest of the Garfield High School film class of 06-07 & JP Moore and Steve Timlin made one last year).  They all raved about it and it sounded like a lot of fun.  So, when Jessica and I moved to

Georgetown

I knew that I wanted to make a film.  Emmett Montgomery had been talking to me about making a really short puppet movie for an upcoming puppet film festival, so I thought about killing two birds with one stone.  For the Hump contest, I took a stab at shooting super 8 and transferring to digital on my own, and thought that this might be good time to try reversing that process (shooting digitally and transferring to film).  Jessica (my wife) said that I was cheating and violating the spirit of the festival by shooting digital and transferring, but I talked to Laura and she said that people did it every year and it didn’t matter.  I really wanted to do the exercise.

Emmett spent a few weeks making some puppets out of brown paper sacks and I met him at Rebar to shoot it.  The editing was pretty simple and I was able to crank it out in an hour or so.  Doing the transfer turned out to be a little more difficult though.  After I made a DVD and tried to shoot it from a TV, GS8 coordinator Laura Wright called me the next week to tell me that it looked really bad, but that I had time to re-shoot it if I wanted.  Fortunately, I had also put a little test footage shooting it from a computer monitor at the end and since that seemed to look a little better, I figured I’d give it a try that way.  I turned the monitor brightness way up and she called to tell me that looked better, but you could still see the control bar at the bottom.  I shot it big figuring I’d have to crop it a bit anyway, so I wasn’t too worried about it.   

My mom and step-dad came into town for the weekend and we took them to the screening, but we had to leave about half way through to make our reservations for her birthday dinner.  It was really cool to see so many people coming down to support the event either by making a film (mid-forties) or watching them (looked to be over 400).  I thought that the venue was neat (one of the old Ranier brewery buildings that managed to survive the recent demolition).  Quite a few of the films that I got to see were really entertaining.  I wasn’t crazy with how the film version looked on the DVD because you could tell see the video controls on the computer in the shot, but I was able to crop it down and it looks a little better here.  The transfer also slowed down when played back from film, so it threw the synching out a bit.  I had to really adjust the audio on this version afterwards to make it work. 

If you are interested in the differences between Super 8 and Mini-DV, this should give you some idea, although keep in mind that these are both pretty compressed versions for Youtube and the film version has gone from video to film and back to video again.

Snipers are Bad People!

One of my friends asked me about my last blog post about Howard Schultz.  He asked me if I thought it was responsible to include comments such as “Where is the crazed gunman when you need him?”.   The question made me think a little bit.  I wasn’t really suggesting that somebody should sit on a tower and take out Schultz with a high-powered sniper rifle.  I was merely wondering aloud.  After the initial shock of Columbine, it hasn’t really been a matter of if some crazed psycho with access to assault weapons will snap at a shopping mall, it’s just a matter of when.  The real sad thing is that when evil shit like that happens, it is usually a bunch of innocent people that get shot down.  That really doesn’t seem fair when that crazy fucker could just as easily take out an evil dick like Schultz instead.  Now, once again, I am not advocating this type of behavior.  I think it is deplorable.  I am merely suggesting that an evil act would be better served against an evil person than it would be some unarmed teenager buying a Britney Spears album at her local Sam Goody.   Evidence suggests that we haven’t seen the last random shooting.  I just wish that these folks would set their sights a little higher and try to reduce their evil footprint on the way out. 

This Kid Claims to want to Kill the President I`m pretty sure this kid can be arrested for releasing this. But, it is pretty crazy. Thanks Slog.

All I’m saying is that it’s too bad this kid isn’t a Sonics Fan.  If somebody out there IS a crazed Sonics Fan and you aren’t good at Google searches, let me help you out a bit.  I’ll periodically try to point you in the right direction (just make sure to leave Paul Allen and Mark Cuban alone). Today, we start with Number 1 on the list:

David Stern

645

Fifth Ave

New York

,

NY

10022

Andy McCone wants YOU!

Subject: Call to Seattle Filmmakers

Calling All Filmmakers!
Our production team is seeking filmmakers to document our May Day extravaganza, and we would love to have you join us!

Please join us in celebrating whimsy, dance, and cake in the streets of downtown Seattle on May 1, 2008.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The two-hour performance is unabashedly celebratory, evocative of the embarkation of a grand ocean liner of the early 20th century. Ooo La La is a free interactive public performance spectacular! Perfumed by the decorative exoticism of art deco coupled with the surrealist tendencies of the Jazz Age, this May Day confection celebrates sweets, romantic love, and the act of wishing.

LOCATIONS
Occidental Square: the dancers dance and throw a party dressed as bakers. The atmosphere is fun and festive. The bakers give away whole cakes to audience members.

Pioneer Square to Harbor Steps: Led by marching bands of bakers, along with groups of giggling dancing cakes, dancers parade through the city along three different routes from Pioneer Square to the Harbor Steps. At stop lights, dances erupt on sidewalks, inviting pedestrians and cars into the merriment.

Harbor Steps: As described in project description.

CONTACT
Andy McCone at andy@mccone.net or 206-819-5138 (www.imdb.com/name/nm1763677/)
Performance date: Thursday, May 1, 2008 (First Thursday); Occidental Square festivities kick off at 5 pm, Harbor Steps show begins at 6 pm.

Ooo La La is envisioned and created by Lucia Neare, with theatrical direction by Cathy Madden, musical direction by Matt Goodrich. and technical direction by David Verkade. Ooo La La is supported by 4Culture and GGLO.

Get to Know your Program Director

We are coming up on the 1 year anniversary of our Program Director, Brian Shelley’s wedding, which means that I am running out of time to give a wedding gift.  It was my goal to finish editing their wedding DVD before then and since it just went out to the replicator last week, I think I’ll make it by the skin of my teeth. 

One of my favorite things to edit was the slideshow of his bachelor party.  A group of us went to the Austin City Limits Festival and while nobody wanted to bring a video camera around for the weekend, we did end up taking quite a few pictures.   This probably won’t be as much fun if you weren’t there, but it should give you an idea about the man who was in charge of putting together the STIFF 2008 Program.  Yes, as a matter of fact that IS a Grateful Dead tattoo that he shares with two other semi-regretful men and no, I don’t think I ever would have become friends with him had I known about it beforehand.  If you see him at the STIFF this year, please ridicule him ask him to show it to you.  Bass in your face,  Brian.