The Anatomy of a Short Film

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As part of the Florida Film Festival, a panel discussion was held on Wednesday, April 10, 2013
between 1:30 and 3PM
in the Full Sail University in the Entertainment Business Auditorium, located next to the Full Sail Live Venue, (141 University Park Drive, Winter Park, FL).  The panel discussion featured industry experts and members of the Full Sail University Film degree program faculty as they took a closer look at the unique components of the short film genre. From story structure issues and thematic considerations, to logistical considerations and new modes of marketing and distribution, this event offered an inside look at the anatomy of the living, breathing short film making process.

The main theme that was stressed again and again was that short films need to be character driven and involve universal themes. The short film is a great place to experiment and it is a safe place to fail. It was pointed out that many beginning film makers will try to do too much in their first short. There can’t be sub plots and too much back story. Bottom line, the short needs to be, well, SHORT! Three minutes was the suggested duration. Longer films don’t get placement in film festivals because the promoters want to show as many films as possible. Students fall into the trapping of using complex camera moves and crane shots but you need to ask yourself, “is the shot really forwarding the story?” Story is king and queen.

A student walked up to the microphone and asked, how he could get backers interested in his idea. A moderator said, “First and foremost, you are selling yourself and then the movie idea.” He asked the student to give him his elevator pitch for the movie. The student began and honestly I stopped listening because the convoluted story took too long to tell. The moderator shouted,”Bing! Time is up, this is my floor.” Everyone laughed. He stressed that the student needed to trim his elevator pitch to be sure he had the person’s interest. The internet has made it so that stories need to be told quicker.

Panelists offered up films that they love that should help a film student to develop story. Films included, Touch of Evil, The Third Man, When Worlds Collide, and Some Like It Hot. That evening I went to the Enzian to see a program of animated shorts. My favorite film was, “Marcel, King of the Tervuren“. it was a great character driven story about a rooster who looses his eye and his brood of hens to his son in a cock fight. Marcel returns and then fights and kills his son. The style was painterly and bold. The Bill Plympton film, “Drunker Than a Skunk“, had it’s world premiere at the festival. It is a Western drawn entirely with ball point pen. The character designs are quirky and amazing. At the film maker talk back afterwards, Plympton said that an animated short costs him about $1000 per minute to produce. Drunker Than a Skunk cost him $5000 to produce. He traded an amplifier for someone’s work on the sound track. His wife Sandrine did all of the color work and once his son, Luca, is old enough, he’ll be part of the production team. Of course, being able to do 100 drawings a day helps. He stood on the stage holding his new born son along with his wife who helps him with each film project.

Plympton’s three rules for making a short film are…

1. Make it SHORT!

2. Keep it CHEAP!

3. Make it FUNNY!

As he said, that describes many of his past girlfriends.

Old Sport

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This year, the Old Sport Champagne Badminton League and Postmodern Literary Society presented 24 Hours of Old Sport – 2013 (First Annual Bonnet Edition).
Saturday March 23, 1 PM to Sunday March 24, 1 PM. Old Sport is a yearly two day party that happens at the Wise Acre Farm in Sorento Fl.

Getting to the Wise Acre Farm was an adventure in itself. Winding country roads gave way to dirt roads. The GPS kept Terry and I on track but the road seemed to stop. We pulled into a horse farm where a suicidal dog kept walking in front of the car.  The dog wasn’t barking but Terry was sure we were in the wrong place. We pulled out and drove through a gate and then drove through a field up a hill towards a gazebo. A bonfire hinted that we had reached our destination.

The Old Sport “Super Committee” consists of
Kim Buchheit (Custodian and Referee)
Naomi Butterfield (Bonnet Judge and Egg Stasher)
Rachel Kapitan (Old Sport Stylist and Mixologist)
and Mr. Robert Johnson (“Token Male”, Live Music and Jam Leader)Terry and I arrived just in time to sample dinner. Everyone sat in a line in their lawn chairs watching the fire. In all there were perhaps 30 Old Sports in attendance. Everyone had been issued lanyards and you could get stickers if you performed stellar deeds. Terry got a sticker for her pink bonnet. Half way through the night she discovered that the hat was meant to be worn inverted inside out. Rachel Kapitan won the egg hunt contest. She knew she had a shot at winning since she was a home town egg hunt champion in her youth. The bar was located in the garage and I sampled the white wine we had brought.

Robert Johnson began performing on the make shift wooden stage set up under a tent. His band “Everyday Ghosts” had split up so he sang solo.  The stage was lit with citronella candles and the fire’s blaze. Electric lights also rimmed the tent’s edge. I was offered a sticky smoors and a milky herb drink as I sketched. People circled up around the fire and the tribal dancing began with drums keeping beat. Dancer, Micihael Sloan, kept the dancing primal and borderline dangerous. He jumped over the flames with grace, and did cartwheels. He wore some pink bunny ears and by evenings end he was christened, “the fire bunny.”



Terry and I had brought a tent but Kim offered up her studio which is where we crashed for the night. Amazingly, the next morning the fire was still blazing. All the Sping trimmings from the farms trees had been burned. A pink blaze on a wooden fence marked the spot where a freeway would one day cut through the property. Robert Johnson’s stage was likely in the south bound lane.

Florida Film Festival

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I made it to the Florida Film Festival on April 8th for Italian Cinema Night. The film 8 1/2 by Frederico Fellini was being screened at 6:30PM followed by free Italian food by the fountain. I went to The Daily City Lounge and found Mark Baratelli sitting in one of the 60’s styled plastic chairs busy checking his iPhone. Every chair had Daily City stickers on them. I had done a quick painting of a Hollywood red carpet couple with the faces cut out. I wanted to see the board in action. The corners of the painting had been crudely painted wit grey paint that was three shades lighter in value than the grey I had painted. I’ll have to go back to touch it up. I was about an hour into the sketch when a filmmaker and her parents stopped by. The parents stuck their faces in the celebrity port holes for the photo opportunity. The wife’s face fit snug as a bug but he husband had a large head and he angled his face thanks to his daughter’s art direction. Within a second the photo was shot and they dispersed.

Mark had plenty of swag at his lounge. He had fliers printed with suggested Orlando hot spots for visiting filmmakers.  He also had hand fans with The Daily City logo on them. The lounge was unfortunately located behind another information tent so patrons at the Eden Bar couldn’t see the lounge. Mark told me that the lounge had been dead for the first two days of the festival. I left the seats in pencil for as long as I could, hoping a crowd would come to populate the scene. They never showed. Before my sketch was complete, the bar maid started wheeling away the portable bar. Mark shouted out, “Does that mean its over!” She shouted back, “It’s over alright.” Across the street, Mark noticed some guy in a large Mexican hat pounding a drum.

When the sketch was done, I went to see if the Italian food was ready. They were still setting up so I decided to leave. I still haven’t seen a film. I want to see an animated feature called “The Painting” directed by Jean-Francois Lagionie. The film is about an unfinished work of art. Lola’s best friend Claire loves Ramo, but their love is forbidden. Claire and Lola are “Halfies,” or artist’s unfinished characters, and Ramo is an “Alldunn,” or completed figure. These classes within the painting do not mingle socially, and when Claire and Ramo’s love is uncovered, Lola and Claire are forced to search out the creator somewhere near the border of the painting. On their adventure they meet Quill, a “Sketchie,” or a simple charcoal outline, from the class below theirs. I’m starting to feel that I need to learn French and move to Paris.

Madama Butterfly

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 Terry got two tickets to see Madama Butterfly‘s final performance at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre. Our seats were in the third row which gave me plenty of ambient light to sketch by. From this seat I had a good view of the projections behind the orchestra created by Lisa Buck. The images lap dissolved gently together working as backdrops and symbolic visual cues. It was often like a slow gentle animation. By the time Butterfly began her all night vigil hoping for her lover to return, I had finished my sketch and tucked it away.

At 15 year of age, Butterfly marries an American Naval Lieutenant named B.F. Pinkerton. He abandons her and she later gives birth to his son, whom she names Sorrow. The final act is heart wrenching and beautiful as the Lieutenant, returned with his American Bride. This scene of abandonment and betrayal had Terry wiping tears from her eyes. I looked around to see utter sadness on the faces of audience members around me. This was Terry’s review…  “Congratulations to director Robert Swedberg, the Orlando Philharmonic and a fine cast (including Erik Branch and Sarah Purser Bojorquez) on an outstanding performance of Madame Butterfly. The amazing thing is that it didn’t feel like concert opera. The simpleness of the setting and the direction made the story and music more powerful for me in a way that it has never been before. The soprano was outstanding with a good range and musicality and acting that drove me (and just about everyone I could see around me) to tears. Seriously, I’ve seen the opera so many times and I never heard so much in the score before. The music told me more the story and the characters than the words in the super titles did. WOW!!!!!!!!! GREAT JOB!!!!!!!”

Robert Swedberg was the Opera director when Orlando still had an Opera Company. The Opera went bankrupt several years ago. Since then Robert has been directing operas in Michigan and all over the country. He returned to direct this one production and he had to fly back to Michigan immediately after he took a final bow with the cast. His next project is directing an original Opera by Orlando composer Stella Sung called The Red Silk Thread, about Marco Polo.

Florida Film Festival Press Preview

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The 22nd Annual Florida Film Festival will be returning to the Enzian Theater and other venues April 5-14. This year’s festival will showcase 160 films many of which might be Oscar contenders. The theme for this years festival is “Open your eyes”, so prepare to see films that push the envelope.

Henry Maldonado, the Enzian’s CEO, got on the Enzian stage to announce some of this year’s highlights. The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock will be screened and Actress Tippi Hendren will be there to talk about her experience in that film and her unique relationship with Hitchcock.

The Festival has always been about Films, Friends and Food. This year author and food historian Francine Segan will present “The Magic Behind Movies and Food”. There are sevaral food related parties during the festival and the closing night party, “Revel 22” will be free and open to the public.

Several short animated films were screened once Henry left the stage. A rather funny one was Una Furtiva Lagrima by Carlo Vogele. It featured an opera singing fish who sang as he went from a supermarket freezer to a frying pan. A second short by Morgan Miller had a raccoon waiting roadside to eat a dead crow. When he ventures onto the road he is immediately hit by a car. The short then ended with another crow waiting to eat the raccoon carnage. The screening ended with a tongue in cheek documentary called, “A Brief History of John Baldessari.” John is an artist who is best known for placing dots over celebrity faces.

Chocolate Thunder & White Lightning

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I went to the home of Al Pergande, the writer and producer of Chocolate Thunder and White Lightning which will be performed at this year’s Fringe Festival. As he explains, “It is a blaxploitation, written by a white guy. Al handed out the scripts to the cast that was assembled in his living room. Valensy Sylvain played Chocolate Thunder, the old school black cop, and Jackie Pitts played White Lightning, a hip, tech savy British female cop. The straight laced, by the books Chief will be performed by Eric Kuritzky.

The Expositionettes called Nutra Sweet sing introductions to each act, much like the female singers in Little Shop of Horrors. The music must not be ready yet, since Dayana Rincon who sat opposite me, sat silent for most of the read through. Eric Branch will be performing as the villainous Mr. Big and his Minion will be played by Miles Berman. Bill Warriner will get the fight scenes co-ordinated and Desmond Flynn will direct. Judging from the first reading, this could be a fun show.

There will be a mad dash to get the play up to speed for the preview on April 15th. There will be just four performances in the Orange venue at this years Fringe.

May 18th at 5:30PM

May 20th at 10:15PM

May 22nd at 8:15PM

May 25tn at 3:30PM

Stardust

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I had time to kill after work, so I decided to get an appetizer at Stardust Video and Coffee. Small paintings by artist Katherine Bennett were on display. They were quirky portraits where people held animals like a lamb, a duck and a mouse. Patrons worked diligently on their laptops. The group in the corner seemed to be studying medical research and they had suitcases and backpacks.

Outside vendors were setting up in the parking lot for the weekly Audubon Community Market that happens every Monday from 6-10PM.  I ordered humus which comes with pita and plenty of veggies. Carl F. Gauze, aka Al, stopped by my table to say hi. He has written a blaxploitation play for this year’s Fringe called “Chocolate Thunder and White Lightning.” He was just grabbing a bite before a reading of the play at his house. This was the first time the cast was assembled. I decided this was a better sketch opportunity than the event at the REP Theater that I had on my calendar. After I finished my sketch and my last carrot, I drove over to Al’s to see this work in progress.

Madama Butterfly

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There are just two performances of the Orlando Philharmonic‘s production of Giacomo Puccini‘s, Madama Butterfly. One performance is tonight (April 5th) at 8pm and the other performance is Sunday (April 7th) at 2PM. You can get tickets at orlandophil.org, or at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center box office two hours before each show.

I went to a dress rehearsal. I entered via the stage door at the same time as the set designer Lisa Buck. This was a semi-staged production, so the set was kept pretty simple. A really nice touch was that Lisa projected images on a large screen behind the orchestra. The images would change between each emotional shift in the opera.  Over 100 of the gorgeous images added much to the production.

Since I was sketching, I didn’t have time to look up at the closed caption translations above the stage. Since I was seated in the front rows I would have had to crane my neck. I’ve seen Madama Butterfly before however so I knew the story. If you have never seen an opera before, then I would encourage you to see butterfly. It could very well make you a convert.

Before the opera began, a gardener shuffled out and raked the gravel in the rock garden. He might not be a major character in the plot but I had to catch him. In the first act, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, played by Brian Jagde, fell in love with Cio-Cio San, Madam Butterfly played by Shu-Ying Li and there is a glorious marriage ceremony. Butterfly converts to Pinkerton’s christian faith to be closer to him and she is renounced by her uncle a Buddhist priest. Pinkerton leaves Japan and three years later Butterfly is penniless with his son who she named sorrow.

Butterfly hears the sound of a cannon from the harbor and she is sure that Pinkerton’s ship has returned. She stands vigil overnight, waiting and ever hopeful. Pinkerton does finally return, but with his American wife. Love lost leads to tragic consequences.

Paint the Town

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Orlando Magazine is partnered with Brad Biggs and Jason L. Lee of The Arts Hub Florida to host it’s eleventh annual Paint the Town Art Show at the Gallery at Avalon Island (39 South Magnolia Avenue Orlando, FL) from March 21 – April 11.  I didn’t submit any work for the show because Orlando Magazine said they would have the right to publish any art submitted for the show in the magazine without paying the artist for the reproduction rights.  Ironically the article in the magazine, which is about the sad state of the arts in Orlando, featured a photo of Terry Olson standing in front of the mural I did for the Mennello Museum. From looking at the photo, you would assume Terry was the artist responsible for painting the mural. The magazine didn’t give me any credit in the article, although the photographer got credit for the photo. This oversight is typical of the state of the arts in Orlando.

I got to the opening on March 21st a bit early to sketch. Brad was the only person in the gallery and he was happy to show me around. He gave me a quartz crystal which should with any luck channel good energy. Submissions to the show were not all your typical “City Beautiful” cityscapes. In the front window was a large portrait of a homeless person. A serial number was on the person’s forehead and the ramshackle frame had grocery bags stuffed full of possessions. From where I sat, the photos of Cindy Murray were most predominant. One photo was of the demolished Amway Arena and the other showed a crowd of bicyclists around City Hall.

Brad pointed out the paintings of Stephanie Kern Stanvey. She had two large juicy portraits on display. Brad said she is the daughter of a preacher and she only recently started painting. Shane Malesky was showing some of his Chronic Damage Art in the bar area. His wife Heather is a riot always making me laugh as I’m trying to focus on the sketch. Someone looking over my shoulder said, “You give a whole new meaning to Paint the Town. I suppose you will hang that sketch in next years show.” “Not likely” I thought.

Musical Mondays

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On March 11th Terry and I met at The Fifth (112 S. Orange Ave., Orlando, Florida) between 7Pm and 9PM for Kelly DeWayne Richards Musical Mondays. Kelly is playing all over town now. On Fridays he performs at Parliament House, Sunday Nights between 6PM and 9PM, he is at Hanson’s Shoe Repair (27 East Pine Street), and on Thursdays between 6PM and 9PM he is at Pilars on Plant street in Winter Garden right next to the Garden theater also between 6PM and 9PM. Hanson’s sounds intriguing since it is a speakeasy and you need to know the password to get in.

The great thing about Musical Mondays is that actors who love to sing musicals show up in droves. Actress Jessi Riese announced that she will be moving to NYC so this was one of the last chances to see her sing. Terry got up and Sang a Sondheim song. Kelly asked the manager to turn on the rooms pink lights since he knew it would look good for my sketch.The highlight of the evening was when the entire room sang along with a song from Rent. As one singer pointed out, “Hearing so many talented singers is like getting a $75 ticket show for free.”