Part 1 of 2: Sean phones Peter, desperate for help with his story idea; and then, in flashback montage, explains the night he went in search of "inspiration" and a cure for his writer's block.
Written in about two hours. Shot on a Sony PMW-EX1. Edited in Sony Vegas 8.0
An office employee hands out suspicious treats to his coworkers, just what is his trick?
**WARNING** Contains Blood and Violence for Humorous Effect (It's a horror film)
I was coaxed into making this as the third installment of Halloween shorts for TakeZer0 ('08) by Sean and Peter. Although at first the idea for the plot was actually a joke, it shortly was developed into a narrative and the dialogue was decided to be mostly improvised. Two hours later, we had shot the film entirely and moved it to post.
Peter did a wonderful job making sense of my crazy vision and should be highly commended for his editing work on the film. If you notice slight changes in the video from watching it previously, that is because he actually went back and re-edited it recently (May 'O9) to give it some better pacing and color, what a nice guy.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and find it to be another timeless halloween classic along with Alien vs. Predator (I'm kidding, as usual.)
Technicals: Shot with Sony…
CreativeQuestion@gmail.com
So our friend Socrates is coming to visit! He works for the Visalia news crew and for some reason wants to interview us (I guess he thinks we're popular or something, heh). Him and his friend will be here this coming Saturday with a pair of Panasonic HVX200's. I guess that means we'll have to see how they compare to our Sony PMW-EX1!
Anyway, if you guys want to have your questions included in the interview send an email to CreativeQuestion@gmail.com with the subject "Question?"
And try and get your questions in by this Thursday, March 12th (we need a little time to prepare everything for the shoot on Saturday).
Everyone wish Soc a good trip! He's coming a really long way just to meet us, Peter and I are very quite honored.
Part 2 is up on http://TakeZer0.com !
So one night at a Barnes & Noble I leafed through this Will Eisner paperback. You know, Eisner, the guy who helped define sequential narrative. In a single page he had this awfully simple definition of storytelling, illustrated in little dialog bubbles. It went like this:
Caveman: Tell me...Ol' Storyteller, where do stories come from?
Storyteller: Well, have you got something you want to tell someone?
Caveman: Yeah...a couple of things I'd like to tell. But, how?
Storyteller: Well, now... decide if you want to tell it as a joke or an adventure story. Invent a problem to illustrate the point!
Caveman: Okay!
Storyteller: Next you solve the problem, which will give you the ending. That, m'boy, is storytelling!
Caveman: Ahah!
This is what storytelling is, plain and true. I'm no authority to give vindication; but Eisner's telling is so straight-as-an-arrow, it penetrates pretension and arrives at some kind of holistic truth.…
Just think about it… What if you were trapped under something heavy and the mouse was out of your reach? Scary, right? That's exactly why we have these keyboard shortcuts so you can still use Vimeo until the help arrives.
