Back in action January 26, 2008
Posted by joost in : LFA, editing, screenwriting , comments closedIn case you are wondering: no, I did not disappear from the face of the earth. Somehow I didn’t get round to updating this blog, even though there is plenty to tell! So here is a quick recap to satisfy your appetite.
Christmas and newyears back home were great. You know the drill; family, friends, catching up, boozing. Several good friends offered me their place to stay, which I gratefully accepted.
Part of the visits coincided with showing my work-in-progress version of “Rule 2″. I was really looking forward to this, because I could literally show what I had been working on in the past two or three months. Until that moment, only filmmakers had seen and commented on it. Now it was time for people close to me to watch it and share their thoughts. The most basic checks that I wanted to do were “Does the story make sense?”, “What do you feel (if anything) at the end of the film?” and “Were there parts where you got bored?”.
Of course people try to be nice so every now and then I had to push in order to hear what they really felt. It’s hard to summarize everything that I have heard, but the bottom line for me was that the film seems to work. Also interesting: I am not planning to change anything that I wasn’t already planning to change before. In other words: I received a lot of feedback, but nothing lead me to rethink or re-edit my film. Which is good I think! (or stubborn – you choose 
The second week of January I returned to London. Most important news that week was that we reached an agreement on making another (“the 4th”) film at the LFA! I’ll write about that at a later moment, what’s relevant for now is that I am trying to get this thing on the road together with some other determined students. Part of this process is that I have written a new short script that might be selected for this film. The plan is to prepare and shoot this extra film in February. Yay!
My year at the London Film Academy is nearly over. We all returned for three weeks of classes. I nicknamed the first week to “Life after the LFA”. We talked about and practiced how to (make a better) pitch, learned about what an agent can and can not do for us, how to make a filmmakers resume, we had career interviews, talks about wrapping up our production files, an ex-student telling how she managed to get a career going after graduating at the LFA, and last but certainly not least a visit to the Pinewood Studios!
Pinewood is like a industrial complex only filled with studios and film related companies, outside Northwest London. Two of our lecturers gave us a guided tour accompanied with all kinds of anecdotes of their filming experiences. Words are hard to describe what that day was like. It was the best way to finish that week. The start of the week everyone was (or got) worried; “how will I ever get a job in the film industry? how do I make sure I eventually get to do what I want to do?” (etc). The week ended with my whole group being psyched about the visit; “THIS is why I want to make films, this is where I want to be!”.
Not so strange when you know that we got to be on the infamous and massive 007 stage where they were shooting the new Bond film “Quantum of Solace” (!), that we were 2 inches away from Oscars, BAFTAs and Cesars for classic films like Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia (!), that we saw things like gigantic blue screens, special underwater facilities, old 35mm cameras and the preparation for a registration with four top of the line HD cameras of the King Lear play featuring Ian McKellen.
The past week we shot 10 short films in 5 days, with actors from the Central School of Speech and Drama. We filmed scenes from existing films. For them one of the first times they act on camera, for us an extra opportunity to direct, camera operate and to DoP. Quite a high pace, something we could achieve because we shot on a professional digital camera (and not film). And of course because we are a lot more experienced now than one year ago 
Next week is the last week of our course. We have a couple of days left to finish the edits of our 10 minute films. Friday February 1st marks our official last day, with the screening of these films. My aim is to have “Rule 2″ completely ready by then. The picture is pretty much locked now, I just need to focus on the dub. Leveling the overall volume, fixing gaps, hisses, pops, clicks, adding ambient sounds, that kind of work.
In case you are wondering “So Joost, what are your plans after that week, what will you do?!”: February will function as a bridge between finishing my year and getting ready for the real world. I intend to stay in London the coming months, hopefully to work, but also to write and direct (my own) short films. And then we’ll see.
Haveseenlist 2008 January 1, 2008
Posted by joost in : film, lifestyle, london, netherlands , comments closedThis post will be updated throughout the year with all the films that I have seen (hence the name). This is the unabridged version. See The obligatory “best films of/in 2008″ post for a summary, the high and the low lights.
Last updated: Wed December 31st, 2008
The Mahabaratha
Eastern Promises
No Country For Old Men (2x)
The Cell
Cruel Intentions
The Kite Runner
Montevideoaki (short) (clips #1 #2)
There Will Be Blood
Cloverfield
I’m Not There
The Matrix
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber From Fleet Street
Suzie Gold
Death Wish II
Youth Without Youth
Anaconda
The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Clear and Present Danger
Il Conformista
Be Kind, Rewind
The Yes Men
Un baiser s’il vous plaît
When Harry Met Sally
The Fountain
The Queen
The Fountain (director’s commentary)
—- Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival – (50 1/3 films, 16 shorts in 11 days) —-
Fall, The
Dynamite Warrior
European Fantastic Shorts #1
Timecrimes
Film Noir
Dante’s Inferno
Ruins, The
Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
Weirdsville
Signal, The
Stuck
One Day Like Rain
Vexille
Mad Detective
Rage, The
Hatchet
Inside
REC
Black Water
Twilight Phantom
Mother of Tears: The Third Mother
Across the Universe
5 Centimeters per Second / Voices of a Distant Star
Pistol Whipped
P2
Diary of the Dead
Sword of the Stranger
Devil Dared Me To, The
Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina
Black House
Peur(s) du Noir
Return in Red
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Dororo
Sukiyaki Western Django
Orphanage, The
Bug
Wolfhound
European Fantastic Shorts #2
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Fido
Bad Biology
Doctor Infierno
Substitute, The
Dorm
Joshua
Waz
Doomsday
On Evil Grounds
Machine Girl, The
Man From Earth, The
Ed Wood
—- end of AFFF 24 —
The Fountain
Crank
Ironman
The Host
La Vie En Rose
The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
The Green Butchers
Operation Filmmaker
The Bourne Ultimatum
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
James Bond: Casino Royale
Charade
3:10 To Yuma
Persepolis
Batman Begins
Batman
Zidane: un portrait du 21e siècle
The King of Kong
Night at the museum
Sex and the City
The Nines
Southland Tales
12:01 (short)
Peter and The Wolf (short)
Taxi Driver
Reservation Road
WALL-E
Serendipity
The Dark Knight (IMAX)
The Dark Knight (35mm)
Kung Fu Panda
Operatsiya Y i drugiye priklyucheniya Shurika
Clerks II
The Da Vinci Code
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Planet Terror
Beowulf
Speed
I Am Legend
How to loose friends & alienate people
Paris, je t’aime
The Fall
Conversations with other women
Iklimler (aka Climates)
El Gran Zambini (short)
Bedknobs and broomsticks
Eagle vs Shark
Ratatouille
W.
E.T.A. (short)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Heart of the World (short)
Bamako
Slumdog Millionaire (review that sums up my opinion nicely)
Man on wire
Gomorra
8 1/2
Midnight Meat Train
Eagle Eye
Ratatouille
My Best Friend’s Wedding
1408
Wattstax
Adam’s Apples
Crossing the bridge: The music of Istanbul