9th Time's the charm

So I don’t think I’ve talked about my most recent movie at all on this lovely blog. Seeing as it took up a large portion of my life for several weeks, it probably should have received some mention.

I’ve had my Cool Movie written for months. I think most of it was done back in the summer. But despite how it may seem at times, med school is actually rather time-consuming so I hadn’t had a chance to do anything with it. But once cardiology was over I saw that I had a full five weeks until my renal exam (it’s usually 3 weeks until the next exam, but we had a couple holidays and evidently the kidneys are twice as important as other organs) so decided now was the time. Now being then, six weeks ago.

So I actually got 90% of the filming done in the first week of the block. The last 10% stretched over the next two weeks, but this was primarily due to my own laziness since they were mostly just narration scenes. For a while I toyed with showing the movie at our Variety Show, but when I started to compile footage and discovered the wealth of material I had before me (large portions of the movie were unscripted, so I had no idea how long they’d go) I decided it wouldn’t fit well into the show. Hence I came up with the Flight of the Conchords number that we did instead. So with no set deadline I took my sweet time editing which was a luxury I haven’t always had in the past. I debuted the film to mixed reviews, though largely favorable. Most of the complaints came from girls who hadn’t gussied themselves up and only realized the importance of doing so after seeing themselves on camera. Hardly a problem with my artistic vision.

At first this movie seems like the same type of movie that I’ve made before. It’s an instructional video on how to be cool, not unlike my video on how to stay single. It’s a fake history of coolness, much like my fake history of the SWKT. This is my ninth movie, and I try to make each different. I had very specific goals for this movie to make it at the very least a departure, and hopefully an improvement of previous efforts.

1. I made no Mormon jokes in the movie. I have no problem with these jokes and I’m sure I’ll make them in the future, but I wanted to make a movie without this crutch.
2. I wanted a quality introduction sequence. My intros are usually just text and music, but I wanted an actual opening sequence for the movie. I had a bit of one with my Cops movie, but this time I timed it much more carefully and think it’s a more interesting concept.
3. In the SWKT movie I had a short segment where I asked people ridiculous questions and got candid responses. This was one of my favorite parts of the movie, even though it had nothing to do with the rest of the feature. So I again took many candid responses (in fact the responses make up half the movie, and took the majority of the film I used) and integrated them into the movie. Some were completely random, but most actually relate back to the “plot” and “themes” of the movie.
4. The movie does have more plot and themes than I typically do. It’s by no means a story-driven movie, but it is a bit more focused than some previous efforts. The scenes are also not purely for comedic value, but make some actual statements about being cool. It’s primarily satire, but I do feel they are some legitimate observations.
5. I was fairly selective with my actors. Though only a couple parts were hand-written for a particular person, I had very specific people that I wanted in the movie. I’m confident in my writing, but I wanted people that I thought were funny and/or engaging on their own and put them into the scenes and interviews. It would seem an obvious change to make, but it’s something I haven’t really focused on in the past.

Also of note, though not intentional, is that the movie is my longest yet. It comes in at an hour and twenty minutes. The movie itself runs just under an hour, with about five minutes of bonus scenes involving the characters introduced in the movie. We then have the bonus footage, consisting of bloopers, outtakes and interviews that I thought were good but didn’t fit into the flow of the movie. So the movie ended up being about a half hour longer than I had intended. But hopefully it’s a quick hour and a half for everyone watching.

I’m starting to write my next project, a modern day Ohio legend. Look for it this March.