2008 Camp Promotional DVDs completed

The 2008 camp season was another exciting one because The Lighthouse Film Company produced twice as many promotional DVDs as usual and I helped with the writing, editing, & graphics.  I also made things more interesting by moving my office to Michigan right in the middle of editing!  But with technology these days (iChat is a beautiful thing) we didn't miss a beat.  And as usual, working with Lighthouse was an extremely positive & fulfilling experience.

If you'd like to check out the results of all our hard work, click HERE.

...And without a moment's hesitation, we've already begun pre-production on the 2009 camps!  They should be extra-exciting due to the celebrities involved.  Curious?  Well, you'll have to wait until we're done, but until then... do these people look familiar?

New York screening for The Only Thing

Rachel Greenberger and Derek Tindall's dreamlike short film The Only Thing, starring Samrat Chakrabarti (Law & Order, She Hate Me, Kissing Cousins) has been selected for screening at the South Asian International Film Festival in New York City between October 22nd & 28th!  I had the pleasure of participating in the editing of this beautifully photographed film, so I'm proud to applaud its continued success.  Keep those festivals comin'!

Two down... ? to go...

The 2nd rough cut of NO LIMIT is now complete... and now we're really getting somewhere!  After taking some time away from the project and showing the first rough cut to some trusted friends and colleagues, I found the direction the story needed to go.  And most importantly, I figured out its weaknesses and strengths.

So I threw out the original structure of the script and started fresh.  The scenes themselves are pretty much the same (although a bit tighter), but they're now in an order that keeps the viewer more engaged and less confused.  It's always been a non-linear story, which can be hard for the viewer to follow, but somehow making it even MORE non-linear has clarified things a bit.

Another big change I made was cutting a lot of the voice-over narration.  As an audience, it's just plain more interesting to wonder what a scene is about than to have somebody tell you up front.  It didn't feel that way when I wrote the script, but it stuck out like a sore thumb once it was up there on the big screen in the first rough cut.

So needless to say, I'm a much happier director than I was after the rough cut, although there's still a long way to go.  There's more tightening to do... plus special effects and sound editing... and of course music.  But this step is in the right direction and it feels like a big one!

I'm heading into another busy season of other projects again, but I'll try to keep pecking away at Draft #3.  Until then...

Grey Branches completed!

Paul Foster's esoteric short film Grey Branches is now officially complete after months of post-production and a strange & wonderful workflow that involved the director, editor (myself), and the composer all working separately all over the country.  Yet somehow we managed to collaborate in such a way that the project is not only finished, but is also something we can all be proud of.

From its humble beginnings as a fun, weekend Halloween project to its current state... a haunting & visually stimulating art-house "short" that stands at an almost epic 40 minute run-time... this "little film that could" finally DID! And now the search for a festival begins.

grey branches

Paul Foster has finished principle photography in New Hampshire, so now the edit begins. He brought the footage down here to my office in Wilmington for a brief but intense few days of initial editing. So far so good. It's a thoughtful and dream-like story about a man dealing with tragedy, inspired by foreign films like The Spirit of the Beehive, Ratcatcher, and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. In other words, heavy on mood and imagery... light on plot and action... which makes the editing even more important than usual. It looks to be a very interesting project to work on, so stay tuned...