Digital artists need to start creating their own films. To the degree we hold ourselves as servants rather than visionaries we will always be begging for our suppers.

 

 

I've narrowed my list of available NYC indie cinemas to 2: IFC Center and Cinema Village.  Both are quite good and have a history of showing animated films. Both theaters seemed interested in Idiots & Angels, so I sent each booker a screener of the film plus the great reviews it got from Variety and The Village Voice.  My plan, and I do have a plan, everybody should have a plan, is this…

 

 

I just hung up on Morgan Freeman.  He called right in the middle of dinner and at our house, dinner is family time.  Friday evening I hung up on Martin Sheen.  I’m sure many other A-List celebrities have been calling of late, but I’ve hung up before they could introduce themselves and implore me to vote one way or another. The campaign phone calls have been relentless, like ants in the pantry in the middle of summer! I am not a tremendously “political” person but I cannot remember a more vicious and completely demoralizing election since I was old enough to vote. Who’s in charge of this pop stand?  I demand to see the manager!

There are only two things you need to do to become a better writer: study and write.  The question is: are you studying and writing optimally?

I wrote screenplays for Columbia and Paramount on instinct, and wrote hundreds of animation scripts the same way.  But I’d never really “learned” how to write. I finally decided to get serious about my craft and read all the best-selling screenwriting books.  I learned quite a bit.  But one of the most important things I learned was that WHAT you read is only half of the journey.  HOW to read is the other. Learn the three R's and become a better screenwriter...

First, start here: http://www.awn.com/articles/columnists/animation-pimp-greetings-st-helena

I'll wait. 

dum dum dum dum dum dum dum

Ten years have passed since that I wrote that. How's internal selection going?

Let me tell ya:

"Is he just giving us all the finger?" said someone to someone about someone during the something something animation festival.

"God, why on earth did he choose this?" told the other one to another one that's not the same someone at the something animation festival.

"Are you drunk?" I've asked myself watching a few competition screenings over the years whilst wondering why I selected a few of the films.

Was no easier when we had a selection committee. I got ripped all the time for their choices. Didnt bother me. I just blamed them. Hell, half the time I agreed with the rippers. Cant do that no more. S'okay.  Bullets bounce off me like raisins off a Prius.

Making these kind of lists is fun but once you sit down and start to do it you soon begin to second guess yourself.  In a way you start to ask yourself if it is even a good idea to set yourself up as a judge of others work and creative output.  For me it is particularly hard as I know many of the people that had a hand in making these shows, and even worked on some of the shows myself.  However at the end of the day I just pushed on - after all my judgement is only that, my judgement. Each reader will have their own ideas and ways of measuring and balancing their own decisions, which may be completely different than mine.. So take a look at what I came up with and feel free to let me know your thoughts...

This endlessly clever short is one of the best produced by Pixar. Teddy Newton’s film features two 2D characters with a CG world alive in their bodies. One represents day and the other night. When Night sees the beautiful women sunbathing by the pool inside Day, a howl of jealousy bellows from him. He tries to take what day has, but every attempt shows that things that go on in the light are not the same in the dark.

For the most part, the short takes its setup and runs with it. The gags fly by at a clip. Just to get a taste, the short starts with a rooster crowing and Day waking. After a series of perfectly paced gags about his morning routine, the sequence ends with a stream appearing in a relieving place on Day’s body. What starts as an adversarial relationship between Day and Night turns toward the end as Night realizes that Day doesn’t have everything. The short ends up being a classic great short in the way it gets into its premise quick, keeps the pace fast and ends with a note of poignancy. At six minutes, it is driven by action, but the action reveals the personalities of the characters and even allows for growth.

On a technical note, the use of stereoscopic 3-D to create physical depth within the worlds inside the characters’ bodies is ingenious. For once, 3-D was actually used for a story purpose.

I'm still in LA and I talked to Greg Laemmle of the Laemmle Cinema and he's not very happy. Because of the lack of review for Idiots and Angels in the L.A. Times. The box office is way down, so Greg decided to pull the film after this Thursday. What a disaster!

 

 

REVIEW: THE "CORE ELEMENTS METHOD"
SCREENPLAY STRUCTURE COURSE

I’ve been writing for decades and have been steeped in screenplay writing techniques from McKee, Truby, Field, Vogler and others. But I just discovered a screenplay structure course that makes it easier, faster and more enjoyable to write much better screenplays. 

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The Animation Winter Wonderland Tour was interrupted  by my crashed hard drive.

The animation masterclass I taught at Bloomfield was wonderful!

Next up the Savannah International Animation Festival.