affleck's news and notes 2.4.13

Short Film Night at Natasha's.

Short Film Night at Natasha's

Last Wednesday was Short Film Night at Natasha's and, as promised, a full recap:  first and foremost, it was a great atmosphere and you have to credit that to Justin Hannah and the staff at Natasha's. Everything came together to make a perfect event for indie film in Lexington, despite the nasty weather. It was great to meet a lot of filmmakers and film lovers. And, of course, it was great to enjoy five Kentucky-made indie shorts that played to an energetic and packed house. Age/Sex/Location, Consignment, Sour Notes, and Watch Me were the other four films that screened along with Bizarnival. I have a sneaking suspicion you'll get to see more than one of those films right here in upcoming Indie Wednesdays. I have an even sneakier suspicion that you'll see the first one this Wednesday.

WSF Housekeeping

Ben Affleck won the award for outstanding directorial achievement at the Director's Guild of America Awards on Saturday to follow up Argo's Best Picture win at the Golden Globes and goes in as a favorite for the same award at the Oscars. Uhhh, what's the best way I can put this? Ben Affleck highly-esteemed director > Ben Affleck, star of Daredevil.

There may be some Tech Talk this Tuesday regarding lots of camera news and scuttlebutt. And I believe that I can say with some certainty that you'll be getting a new VHessay this Saturday! Another hint? There may or may not be a Tom Skerritt sighting.

If you didn't catch it, Saturday I posted a little mini-doc I shot a couple of years ago about Street Scene, a store of all things vintage, in Lexington.

The Space Cops 4 edit is still going well. However, I have definitely decided to shoot future episodes in HD and then crop them down to 4:3. I need the extra color space and resolution for effects work. Mostly the chromakey.

Hey, did you know you can still hire us?

And last, but not least, Todd, Allen, and myself will be meeting in the next few days to discuss all possible productions for 2013 and prioritize the shooting schedule. We don't have the time or resources to produce nearly as much material as we'd like, so this is probably as important a "meeting" as we'll have all year. Will there be an ambitious short this year? Will we have something ready for the Danville Lawn Chair Film Fest? How far will we go down the Space Cops road? Do we have another web series up our sleeve? ...So much to discuss and I can't wait!

indie wednesday: David Lehre

Indie Wednesday salutes all the filmmakers who are light on budget, heavy on creativity, and won't rest until the story is told.


This video reminds me of the stuff we used to do in high school and college. Plus, it got David Lehre kicked out of Theatre History class and I certainly wish I had been kicked out of my Theatre History class. All good reasons to feature David here today.

I've been aware of Lehre since he gained YouTube fame when he was a high school student in Michigan. If I remember correctly, David got a development deal with Fox television thanks to his MySpace: the Movie and other videos. Nothing materialized out of that particular deal, but Lehre capitalized on the momentum. He left Michigan and moved to the West Coast where his Vendetta Studios now does high end, creative productions and has high profile deals with clients like Coke. Not bad, right? I got a lot of laughs out of his old material and continued to follow him as he transitioned into a professional career. I guarantee you'll be quoting Petey and Peanut all day after you watch this one:



We wish for continued success to Mr. Lehre in the future and maybe a little less of this. Chad Future seems to be one of his newest endeavors. From what I can tell it's a sincere venture into music with an alter ego. I don't know if it's a Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines phase, but hey, more power to you, David. You seem to be an energetic, enthusiastic, and super positive guy that just likes to live and let live and I can get behind that.

sundance's news and notes 1.28.13

Sundance says hello.

Welcome, welcome. Since this is an indie film blog (of sorts), I'd be remiss not to mention the most ballyhooed spectacle in the indie world: the Sundance Film Festival. Just how indie it is always stirs great debate, but you can argue that amongst yourselves. I dig Redford and the fact is, if any one of us was lucky enough to get accepted into Sundance, we'd all go running and jumping through the streets. Therefore, we will give respect here at Walk Softly. As the 2013 Festival comes to a close, the biggest item of note was that this was the year of the ladies. That's right. Congratulations, ladies! The U.S. Dramatic Competition, for the first time ever, featured as many female directors as men. Jerusha Hess, the female half of the Napolean Dynamite team, made her directorial debut with Austenland which was very well received. And some other names that created waves included Francesca Gregorini, Jordan Spiro (who apparently made quite the heartbreaking love story), Mahalia Belo, and Lauren Wolkstein. Also, interestingly enough in this economy, there were several record breaking deals for films like the feature directing debut of Joseph Gordon Levitt. But enough of that. Let's talk more of the usual nonsense.

When Bo Jangles comes calling, it could be the end for Don and Jonny.

There are several things that I'm excited about this week, the first of which is the way the Space Cops 4 edit is coming along. The closer it gets to completion, the more I can't wait for you to see it. Lots of effects work got done last week, primarily compositing. Things like sky replacement, adding muzzle flashes, bullet hits, and blood hits and whatnot into shots that would look even sillier without them. We don't have the budget, expertise, or time for many old school practical effects like exploding blood squibs (I wish we did), so we do much of it after the fact. The effects work continues this week as well as lots and lots of sound design as I'm trying to be meticulous about the sound effects and music on this episode while teaching myself a few things along the way.

The second thing I'm hyped about is the newest VHessay. The next movie up for analysis arrives today (courtesy of Netflix)! You want hints? It involves the ultimate excursion for nerdy kids in the 80s. And it stars several big names in an ensemble cast that were just getting their start. That's all you get for now and I'm afraid I've already said too much. I haven't seen this flick in twenty-five years, so I'm excited. I hope to post it this Saturday, but I'm not going to make any promises.

One last really weird and incredibly awesome tidbit for you today...
What year did Space Jam come out? 1996? Well, what if I told you the Space Jam website (yes, from 1996) had been living on the Warner Brothers site all this time? Untouched by the hands of man. Like a time capsule. Like King Tut's tomb. Just waiting for the sand to be cleared away and shared with the world, perfectly preserved. Waiting to make us all 19 years old again. I mean we're talking about the infancy of the internet. No joke. Now what if I told you, you could go see it? Right now? You have a ticket to King Tut's tomb. And here it is:  Space Jam!!

See you later this week for Indie Wednesday and more!

UPDATE:  I completely forgot to mention that the Short Film Night at Natasha's is this Wednesday, so I'll be sure to give updates on how that goes if you can't make it in person. It's always nice when you get a chance to support the indie scene in Central Kentucky.

indie wednesday: Kaleb Lechowski

Kaleb Lechowski is a 22-year-old German who studies digital film design. Well, he was. Judging by R'ha, the short film he made in his first year, it looks like his studies paid off. One student, all by himself; all of the design. Every. Thing.

There is an extremely comprehensive article on Mashable that talks about Kaleb's process on the project, so I won't reproduce it but you can read it here. Needless to say, R'ha spread quickly across the interwebs and as soon as Hollywood saw it, they went all aflutter. A top dog agent jumped on it and Kaleb headed across the ocean.

tech talk: vector video and the death of pixels

On the left, you can see the supposed vector paths.

Tech Talk Tuesday! I'm not sure if I'm going to turn this into a weekly column or not, but either way, let me share a bit of tech talk for the filmmakers/videoheads amongst you that I stumbled onto this morning because the concept blew my mind.

A team at the University of Bath is claiming that they've invented a vectored video codec and effectively killed pixels and resolution as we know them. In fact, they claim pixels will be gone within five years. (You can find further explanation and a sample video here.)

Vectors are a series of points and paths that turn everything into a mathematical whatnot. Therefore, you can make the same image as tiny or enormous as you'd like and it will always look exactly the same. The end of resolution as we know it. HD, 720, 1080, 2K, 4K... all out the window. And now you can go as big as you want without increasing the file size. Encode a film one time and that's it.

Overall, I'd say this is good news if it truly works. On the other hand, it scares me to death. Does this basically change every single thing we do at the root level? Do we toss every piece of video gear and software we're currently working on and start from scratch? Can this really be legit? Getting a photo-real image out of vectors is a little hard for me to believe, let alone 24-60 images per second. I guess time will tell.

ThinkGeek.com if you have to have it.

And for anyone who is incredibly bored by all this, did you know you can actually buy a tauntaun sleeping bag?! That's the other thing I learned today. If there was any debate over the greatest sleeping bag of all time, now we can put it to rest. Mrrawrharharhar. But, seriously, that's incredible.

MLK Jr's News and Notes 1.21.13

In every era there are people who rise above the rest of us. I don't mean in business or wealth or power. I mean in a special understanding of the human condition. An understanding and vision that is often decades ahead of the general population. Martin Luther King Jr. most certainly fits into that category. He could see past the horizon and made it his life's work to make his dream a reality.

That's why we have a national holiday in the man's honor and that means the kids are out of school. I hope most of you are off work too. Both apply to me, so that means you're getting a quick post from the cellular device today.

Work continues as normal at the compound. On top of editing, there was some scuttlebutt last week about possibly starting a movie-focused podcast. I'm not saying, I'm just saying. And I'll be getting another classic 80s flick in the mail this week for a new VHessay later. What's it going to be??

If you feel short changed on today's update, I can promise you an interesting Indie Wednesday about an indie sci-fi short that is making waves in Hollywood. Plus at least one more fun post.

indie wednesday: Eos Karlsson

Eos Karlsson is an actor, dance-acrobat, filmmaker and graphic designer. And on top of all that, he's a stuntman. Impressive, yes. But I only have one question. Has he ever been with anything less than a nine? (So fine.) If so, he's no Colt Seavers. Colt may have never cared too much for school, but he taught ladies plenty. I can assure you of that, Mr. Karlsson!

Anyway, be sure to watch the video in fullscreen because it really does look good and enjoy the multi-talented Eos Karlsson's stunt reel. Although now he will no longer be an Unknown Stuntman. (And feel free to insert any additional Fallguy jokes here.)

golden globes' news and notes 1.14.13

How about those Golden Globes? Well, I couldn't tell you because I didn't watch them, so get over it. I hear Tina and Amy knocked it out of the park though, as is to be expected. And Kentucky's own Jennifer Lawrence got the win and continued her meteoric and seemingly unstoppable rise to superstardom. That girl's career is unbelievable and she seems to have a really good head on her shoulders. She could always completely flake out and date Wilmer Valderama or something, but I don't see it happening. Sorry if you wanted some coverage of the event out of us, but we might try to do a live blog or something special for the Oscars. Let's move on to the news because I have lots of it!

Let's start with the biggest news of the day. Bizarnival is coming to Lexington. There is going to be a great night of indie short films in Lexington this month (January 30th) and Bizarnival is one of the four films that were chosen to be featured. It's happening at a cool venue called Natasha's and you're all invited! Justin Hannah organized it and looks to be a really fun night. Read all the details right here! By they way, Bizarnival is going to be blocked on Vimeo until the 30th. So, if you need your fix of the Biz's weirdness, we'll see you at Natasha's.

First, I finally finished up that VHessay I'd been talking about forever. Did you read it? Come on! It's Cloak & Dagger! How can you not read it? Seriously, go ahead, we'll wait. It may not be my best work, but I plan on writing more VHessays on a regular basis because I enjoy revisiting those movies and I hope you do too.

As of now, our services are still available as a Creative Agency! We've had a conversation or two but are still looking for that perfect match. If you need some creative ideas, marketing, design, or video; we might be the guys. Just read this and give us a ring. Send it to your friends in the business world.

Last, but not least, the obligatory Space Cops update. I did some effects work this week that turned out pretty darn well. I'm also planning on taking a day off work to do nothing but try to finish off Episode 4. And that brings up a question for you good people. Would you like to have Episode 4 as soon as you can possibly get it? Or would rather wait until we could release 4, 5, and 6 all within the same month? Leave us some feedback in the comments or on Facebook.

See you back here for Indie Wednesday and more. Toying with a few ideas for additional weekly columns, so you never know when those might start popping up.

indie wednesday: The Underwater Realm

Today we take a look at The Underwater Realm from Realm Pictures. UWR, as they call it, is a five part series. (Watch the rest here.) It is important to know going in that these are not short films. Apparently they were always intended to be teasers. A little taste of (presumably) larger stories they had in mind that could also showcase the technical skills of all involved.

If you're interested in the particulars and the intent, I highly recommend reading this interview with several of the filmmakers. There are so many people involved with this including Director David Reynolds, Producer Jonathan Dupont, and DP Eve Hazelton and we are featuring them primarily because the undertaking of this project was incredibly ambitious and while I don't know if all their goals for UWR will be realized, I am certain that they should be very proud.

The Underwater Realm is also another interesting examination of crowdfunding. UWR waged an immensely successful Kickstarter campaign to the tune of $101,000. All the donations made will basically amount to exactly that: donations. Kickstarter is difficult for me to wrap my mind around. (I sometimes wonder exactly what type of project it would take for me to consider waging such a campaign. Asking for that kind of money is scary even though the concept of crowdfunding makes it slightly less so. And the pressure to produce after those dollars roll in has to be immense.) Of course, all budgets are relative. Although 100K is an amount I can't even imagine at the disposal of Walk Softly Films, and I certainly doubt we would use it on teasers rather than a complete short or feature film at the least, the Realm Pictures gang points out that just the coffee budget on a film like The Hobbit was higher.

To be fair, this was their plan from the start. Do something no one had ever seen before. Give people a taste of productions shot completely underwater. Trust me, the logistics are mind boggling and I'm actually impressed that they were able to do all of this for that price. They were creating a promise to sell. They intentionally modeled UWR after other successful shorts on the web that had garnered big deals for the filmmakers responsible.

So, what do you think? Did they succeed? Was it a good plan? Was it the best use of their funds? Some of the feedback on YouTube has been downright ridiculous and cruel (as is to be expected). But I will say I tend to agree with those that think a more complete story could have helped immensely. There are five pieces, but none of them feel like a complete segment or that there is even a significant connecting thread between them to create that story.

Nonetheless... Congratulations to Realm Pictures. UWR is impressive and they should be very proud at what they were able to do.