Janglin’ – Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Glass –  Bat for Lashes

All is Love – Karen O and the Kids

Raindrops – Basement Jaxx

The Newark Airport Boogie – Electric Six

Possible Music soundtrack – Hal Hartley

Beck – Leonard Cohen covers with guests from Beck’s website

When we are young we have the ambition.

When we are older we have the talent.

“That’s the way it should be. You should do this thing that you like, you should do this thing that you love. And that was what we took from punk rock, you don’t wait for someone to tell you it’s cool, you don’t wait for permission, you don’t wait to think this is going to make me famous, you just do it.”

-Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips) on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic

Yes you can. I’ve done it twice now – and the excercise is nothing short of a mental marathon and a race against the sun.

Last Friday night our team (actress/producer Gretchen Treser, writer Elisa Silva, director of photography Chris and his wife Debra Hornbecker, Nike designer Matt Holmes, myself, and filmmaker Briana Bononcini) spent several hours on a conference call brainstorming. It was painful. We had received the genre DRAMA or HORROR as part of the National Film Challenge (you have 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a film up to 7 minutes in length).

We all generated several ideas. There was long pauses after each one was said. None of them were great. But they all contained bits of greatness. Matt had suggested we make a film where you are slowly trapped in your own house, the windows would be covered, the doors locked etc. That got us thinking about claustrophobia. Elisa and I had gotten obsessed with the baby monitor that was in the room with us. It kept making odd noises. That led us to a thought about a walkie talkie. There was talk of an older lady who lived next door to Gretchen. What kind of relationship would Gretchen have would a little old lady next door? The ideas jumped back and forth between psychological horror and coming of age drama. Our final idea ended up smack in the middle of those two things.

Sometimes you have to throw a lot of stuff onto the wall, to get to the good stuff. Get all the bad ideas out of your system, and a good idea will emerge.

It was now Saturday morning close to 2am, and we had decided to make a film about an agoraphobic widow who develops a friendship with a 12 year old boy who leaves a walkie talkie on her doorstep.

I was woken up by the phone. DP Chris Hornbecker was downtown, had picked up gear and wanted to pick me up.

We didn’t have a child actor yet. We didn’t have a script yet. I threw on my clothes and got in the car with him.

We began scouting locations. I made some phone calls. By 1pm, we had two kids to choose from, a completed script (Elisa was writing right up to shoot time), and our equipment fired up and ready to shoot.

Jonah Kellam was great. The kind of actor who gets it right on the first take. Our idea centered on us getting the right kid for the part and we were very fortunate to find Jonah. Gretchen had called an acting coach who put us in touch with his mom. Two hours later she was driving him to our set. Everything happened very quick over the weekend. It had to. We had to have our completed film in the mail to the National Film Challenge on Monday. The clock was ticking.

We shot into the evening.

To be safe we had Gretchen and Jonah read the entire script in a quiet room. We would use this audio for any over-dubbing we had to do. 

Because we had not chosen a simple idea, and because our script had many set ups, we had to shoot some of the scenes that took place in the day, at night. Chris did a great job of recreating the sun for a scene where Gretchen opens the front door to grab a package:

It's actually 10pm at night here

We wrapped around 11pm, after transforming the Hornbecker’s house into a set. There was gear everywhere. We had moved the furniture around. 

I decided to get a full night’s sleep, though I was tempted to head into the edit suite and start loading footage.

I slept for 10 hours straight. Woke up – went into the edit suite (around 10:30am). And didn’t come out until the next day at 4am.

A lot of things came together in order for us to complete the film in time. Jeremy Wilkins of Allegra Gellar composed a song for us that helped give the film the proper mood. Chris Hutchinson designed awesome titles. Elisa was a huge help in the edit. Briana got her younger brother Deems to come in and help with some audio effects.

So yes, you can make a movie in one weekend.

If you get lucky.

Check back here in the coming months to see the film.

My mom and aunt have started a business making pillows.

My mom is quite handy with the sewing machine.

Pillows are here on Etsy

Thanks for the heads up. Let me know when.

________________________________________
From: Justin Lowe
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 9:14 PM
To: David Neevel
Subject: Note

I might need you to help green screen me onto the flying dog from Neverending Story.

Download the new track from Snax. It’s great.

New E-Side on Snaxonline.org. Special sneak peak from Snax’s LP, “Can’t Be Bothered.” Download today! (Please click link below and navigate to Audio/E-Sides, scroll down and click the E-Side album cover for download link.)
 

 http://www.snaxonline.org

Skirting On The Surface

In 1998, I logged onto Ticketmaster in the computer lab of my high school and purchased tickets to see Radiohead perform at the Salem Armory. The performance blew me away. 

Thom Yorke is now doing some solo shows in LA. This bit of a new Radiohead song he performed, embodies one of things I like so much about the band – they craft music with enough ambigiuity to warrant repeated listenings, and are quite good at getting the stuff stuck in your head

Keith Ellison – nice one!

yeah i think this is ironic

I grew up in a small town on the Oregon Coast. The closest movie theater was 16 miles north. I remember seeing several films there. It had one screen, cheap popcorn, old seats. Perfect.

All the movies I saw there were popcorn flicks.

Dances with Wolves. My Girl. Ghostbusters 2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit*. Dick Tracy. Naked Gun 2 1/2. Back to the Future III. Kindergarten Cop.

I was a nine year old with a subscription to Entertainment Weekly.

This was the only Entertainment Weekly I didn't get to read when it arrived in the mail due to this cover

I was making my own movies with the camcorder my grandpa bought my dad at home. Ghost Code (in which I would dissapear and re-appear in places by having my dad start and stop filming). Crime Stopper Jones – a two scene film showing the repurcussions of shoplifting (my dad and I play cops who chase after mom, we pull her over and I tell her she’s under arrest for ’shoplifting, dangit!’).

I enjoyed movies for their creativity – for the worlds they took me to. I cried when Macauley Culkin died in My Girl. I was shocked when the baby in Roger Rabbit said a swear word (I think it was ‘damn’). I laughed along to Leslie Neilson with my cousin Denise.

Then something big happened in 1991.

The old theatre shut down and a new one (with three screens!) opened up in Newport.

I was there on opening night to see Hook (not a great movie). Back the next night for Beauty and the Beast. And back shortly after that for a Star Trek movie. I had thought it was one with Patrick Stewart but I guess it was the Undiscovered Country. I remember some special effects involving red bubbles…

it must have been this:

Movies were an escape for me. Not that I had a bad childhood. I was blessed with great parents.

I will never forget driving into Springfield, Oregon with my mom and brother Travis. We had just visited my brother Tyler – Travis’ twin who was in a nursing home in Eugene, Oregon. We’d drive to see him almost every weekend. Four hours round trip.

In the distance near the mall we were about to explore I saw a sign. A large sign. MOVIES 12.

I couldn’t believe it. “MOVIES 12! THEY HAVE 12 SCREENS?”

If I recall correctly I immediately convinced my mom to see a double feature of Nothing But Trouble and Kindergarten Cop (which I had just seen with her two nights before in Newport).

Man. My poor mom! No mom should have to endure Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd:

(let alone the amount of sitting we did that day!)

Eventually I got to start watching more adult movies. I remember asking my mom how guys had sex, before we saw Philadelphia. She hesitated thinking maybe I was too young to see the movie. We went anyways. It was amazing.

My dad took my brother and I to see Terminator 2 in Portland, Oregon. Possibly my first R rated movie in the theatre. There was so much hype about how much money Cameron had spent on the film, we decided we had to see it. It was a blast.

But it was nothing compared to seeing Pulp Fiction in the theater in 1994. I was in middle school. I don’t think I had ever seen a movie that didn’t follow a three act structure. It went to some dark places. It was shocking. Funny. Great use of music. I have never been more blown away walking out of a movie. When I got home there was a news piece about not letting your kids see it. Dad looked at me. “Too late” I said.

Kids can handle more than you think.

I remember seeing Leaving Las Vegas with two friends in Newport. My mom picked us up. We got in the car and she said “Anyone want to go get a drink?” We all laughed. No thank you.

(The funny thing is I’m not sure she remembered what Leaving Las Vegas was about. I think she was genuinely offering to stop somewhere so we could get sodas)

There was one movie I anticipated seeing for a long time while growing up. It was CITY OF LOST CHILDREN. The trailer and poster sparked a curiosity in me. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before. It looked like by watching it you would literally enter another world of imagination. It looked stunning. I feel like it took a year before it got anywhere close to an Oregon screen – or at least to an Oregon screen I was close to.

Finally my family was in Portland and it was showing downtown. I was going to go see it by myself. I walked up to the theatre doors which were cracked open. Flys were buzzing all around. I got nervous. The theatre seemed sketchy. I decided to wait for video.

When Waldport Video got a copy in, I was first to rent it out. Ironically, I feel asleep during the first ten minutes.

BTW- kinda wierd for a foreign film to have a videogame made after it, eh?

There are a few more movies and experiences I could share with you. Seeing The Sweet Hereafter at the Portland Creative Conference. My feelings walking out of Fight Club. Why I think Wings of the Dove is amazing. Watching great ’90s comedies like Defending Your Life.

But now it’s time for you to share some memories … leave comments below!

*Of all the movies I mentioned this one still holds up – it’s like LA CONFIDENTIAL for kids. Brilliant. Also the effects still look good some 20 years later. I think the way everything was puppeted (all the props were puppeted by strings and wires and poles) is still genius. A lot of work used to go into shooting stuff. Now everyone just puts a lot of work into post-production!

WKE Trailer: Califunya, Don’t Move Here, 12, How To!, DIY America

coming soon

Jim Jarmusch on music in film

The Obama Plan in 4 Minutes

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