Coming back to life.

After thinking about it and reading about it for a while, I’ve finally taken some baby steps back into the world of filmmaking. I’ve started a regimen of 3 pages a day, and on Saturday  Papersniffer stopped by with Greenscreen material.

We shot some stuff against the Greenscreen, but after we were done found out we have a lot to learn about lighting. Only so much of the ’screen’ would be transparent at a time. A little frustrating, but I will work it out.

Also spent the weekend watching Chan-Wook Park’s “Vengeance Trilogy”, actually the two movies I hadn’t seen: “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Lady Vengeance”. Mr. Park’s work is so beautiful and brutal, I can’t help but be influenced by it.

One thing I love about his work, in additon to his brilliant use of long shots and close-ups, beautiful scenery, and razor shap dialogue, is his sublime use of cgi. Like Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Day Watch, Wanted), he uses cgi as a tool, a means to an end, not just a toy to show off, like Michael Bay would.

Also saw my “cross town rival” Andrew while I was out Friday night. We talked for a while about our projects and our mutual admiration for Andrew Kramer’s http://www.videocopilot.net . Knowing that we are at about the same level really fires me up. We have our own relative strengths, and everyone says we will collaborate eventually, but for now I’m happy working on my own.

All in all, it feels good to do “something”.

I’m thinking my next move is writing some shorts to explore different techniques and just to write. I know I’ve been telling people about the Rockets and Rayguns thing, but this may be first. I need to get my chops together and the only way to do it is to make more movies, not just wait around until another competition comes along to fire me up with a deadline.