Oak Street Films

The AFFT, an organization dedicated to “creating a strong and exciting future for the film and television industry in Tennessee,” will host an event in Chattanooga from 6:00PM to 8:00PM on November 11 in the 7th floor auditorium of the EPB building. The organization serves as an advocate for film and television professionals in Nashville, and this event will feature an open discussion of what steps AFFT might take to affect the state’s legislative agenda.

More information on membership is available on the organization’s site; for more information about this event, download the invitation.

I’ve just put together the (first?) trailer for Hell Is Other People. View it (and leave your comments) after the jump.
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It’s been a very hectic couple of weeks: I’ve been bouncing between production of Hell Is Other People and the post-production phase of my fourth short documentary. It’s unfortunate that I’ve had to be so neglectful of the blog this soon after having created it, but I’m easing into a kind of rhythm with HIOP and I expect to be getting back into the swing of things.

We’ve been shooting–sporadically–for about the last week and a half, and I’m very happy with the way things are going. It’s been over two years since I began “writing” the scenario for this project, and I can’t begin to express what a relief it is to be underway after so many frustrations and false starts. We’re shooting more or less in sequence, one happy consequence of which is that I’m able to edit as we go and will end up working with an ever-lengthening contiguous chunk of the movie. So far, I’ve put together a rough cut of the first fifteen minutes.

I don’t normally like to show anyone even a part of a work in progress; I tend to take any criticism offered much too seriously and often end up feeling as if I’m letting the film be directed by a committee. That having been said, I’ve decided to post a clip in spite of myself and may end up regretting it. This will likely be the only time I’ll do so on this project, so if you’re curious you’ll get your only early peek after the jump.

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There are a lot of things I want to write about, but I’m in the midst of a particularly busy–and stressful–week. I’ve been recovering from the shock of a very disappointing turnout at the shows the other night (though the reaction to the films on the part those who did attend could not have been better or more satisfying), and am simultaneously preparing finally to begin work on Hell Is Other People even as I scramble to find some kind of way to pay my landlord and avoid sudden homelessness.

Stay tuned. Or in more medium-appropriate terms, don’t delete those bookmarks from your browser (or the feed from your reader). I’ll be right back.

Nick Rombes, a writer whose opinions on movies and the general cultural state of the art are almost always right on the mark, recently expressed a sentiment which seems to be quite pervasive these days. In a brief preface to a post about music he states that he is “tired of [movies] because they are not so good any more. One day, they will be good again. Worthy of words. But not now.”

I think a lot of us know exactly what he’s talking about. The product at the multiplexes is both completely disposable and utterly moronic, and “independent” film has largely been reduced to banal non-stories about recent college graduates who whine about how hard their lives are in spite of the fact that they drive around in cars bought for them by their wealthy fathers. There are silly men-in-tights movies on the big screens and equally silly boys-and-girls-in-flip-flops movies on the smaller screens. To top it off, the audience for films is shrinking at an exponential rate–not only because the movies on offer tend to be so worthless in general, but also thanks largely to all 6,000 worthless cable channels, 6 billion internet videos of people “hilariously” being struck in the testicles by airborne objects, etc. Things are bad, and getting worse every day.

So why continue to make movies in this climate? Why do I even bother? I’ll give you a couple of reasons.

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I’m hoping this third-generation re-design of the site will answer some of the more nagging, longstanding deficiencies of its previous iterations. One of the biggest problems has been the lack of content relating to the movies I make to earn a living (as opposed to the movies I make purely out of my love for Auntie Kino); it’s hard to make an impression on potential clients, collaborators, or contractors when there’s nothing on one’s Web site which relates directly to the the type of work a client might want to talk about. So I’ve finally broken down and decided to build a page called services as part of a new effort to remedy that problem.

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