FILMOLOGY

Folks,

Our short film “THE SECRETS” is in 4×4 mode. Driving slow but climbing rocks. Steady.

Next up is finding the right location. And you can help me here. By thinking. Thinking about your favorite conference rooms and the coolest restaurant/bars in town that let filmmakers in for free and get tons of advertising in return…smart business! Email me your recommendation, I’ll do the talking and if we like what we see, you’ll get a ceadit in the Special Thanks section of the movie.

We’re looking for a Conference Room and a hotel Restaurant/Bar area to shoot on a July weekend.

Thanks
Bivas

Paragraphs that rock from the book “What they don’t teach you at film school”

Desire is a sign. Spoken to you. Talent, in contrast, is a judgement rendered after the fact.

If you’re worried about being too exposed, remember that the audience does not know and/or care who you are. It’s their pain they care about and theirs they feel in the dark room. Let them have it.

Directors need to sharpen the same skills that private investigators do: the capacity to notice definitive clues.

Writing is more important than taking your vitamins. skip it and you will take a very expensive road back to square one. 

Breakfast, sex and the trip to the dry cleaners can all happen after the crucial 20 minutes of writing.

Tell a kid your story and see what parts you leave out. What you leave out in the telling is significant. They probably don’t belong in the film. If an 8 year old can understand the story without it, why have it?

Making films is an expensive way to find yourself

FINDING YOURSELF : A COST COMPARISON

Spiritual retreat in Santa Fe : $800

Trekking in Nepal w roundtrip airfare from LA : $3300

The couch (3 years, 3 times a wk, $100 sessions) : $46,800

Film School (3 yrs tuition, living expenses and film production costs): $110,000

Financing your own feature that sells :  $5,000 to infinity or beyond.

Prayer little prayer
Don’t come close i’m hardly here
I’ll split and I’ll tear
I’ll hurt and I’ll bear
When u love when u share
When u drop me like a tear
Deafening screams, abnormal fears
Makeup runs when emotions are bare
Logic straddles on multiple layers
Fuck and fight, our daily fare
Our time is near with no time to spare.
Did we push or did we walk together
How did any of us get here
Do we remember, do we care.
Burn it all and the hell outta here
Charred memories burn everywhere
Piece of paper, piece of lead
Just a prayer little prayer
Will carry me from here.

Vast stretches of land. land everywhere i look. i am behind the wheels. the wind rushes by my ear like a gushing stream. i burn through this land making my way rushing to get somewhere. a place i knew but I’m not sure now. smell of early rain. thick stumps of tree lie beheaded on the ground. i slow down and stop. I jump out of my jeep and walk across a sheet of fine, cold drizzle. My wheels are wedged between two stumps . the jeep sinks down as it pushes the wheels further into the wedge. I’m not sure if I can get them out.

the sky is a shade of purple grey heading towards black. the drizzle has given way to rain. orifices on the ground laid out like land mines with smoke seething out of them. the smoke curls up vertically. On their way up they take on the shape of the statue of the academy award.

I come across a circular chasm. calm, dead, inviting, no smoke shaping out of this one. covered with debris and dead branches smeared with ashes. in between the branches and the twigs, the eyes can see black, the chasm is filled with black water. undisturbed by the falling rain.

I barely pass it when I hear the hissing sound and I know immediately, before I could take another step, I turn and there she is, rising out of the black hole, her neck reaches up, she is as tall as me - I have seen her before, I have read about her but don’t know her name. she has black beady eyes on a black and white checkerboard patterned body. Her tongue unfurls as she looks at me for a split second before slamming down on me.

I thought i was standing but i am lying on the ground with her body flush against the entire length of the left side of my body. I can feel the rain on my face. I’m surprised I’m alive. why did she spare me? she lies motionless beside me. I’m trying to stay still. breath carefully. after what seems like an eternity, I reach out, slowly, to make sure i’m not dreaming, expecting an ice-cold feel to the touch, I place my hand over her, the sheets curled up with the blanket is right where she was. I’m awake.

I touch my face, I’m dry! tick tick tick tick tick…the steady marathon of the hand on my clock perched on the headboard. Splashes of light stream from outside, through the blinds on the bedroom window and make patterns on the wall. the hum of the AC running. 21st century amenitites, working the way they are meant to. everything is in place. everything the way I left them here, in this world, in my time. I am here. this is my world. this is my time. that was just a dream.

i have been writing a short. i haven’t made a film since the beginning of the year. i have worked, i have travelled and judged other people’s films. but where is mine? putting together a feature is a burning process, nothing to do with art. the art of filmmaking is a fallacy, it’s a lie, it’s a goddammn illusion. it is a business and no different than setting up shop to sell a shoe except you have to have a name feet attached to it! nothing wrong with selling shoes but I signed up for the sprint!

short film it is. string of short films to make up a feature. the audience don’t know what they want anyways. they pay millions to support crap and then blame hollywood for churning crap when all it is is a business based on supply and demand. we ask for it and we get it…in loads. we have plenty,  let’s revel in it, bask in the glory of self imposed nightmare. make love under the star studded nightsky emblazoned with the promise of “films are dreams”. why be a guy with a camera with typed words on blank pages and wait in line to pay millions and wait for years to put up a face that will please audience! by the time the beloved face is shimmering on the silver fucking screen crunched in a dwindling theatrical window, the audience is watching somebody else! like the way infants feel about people -great aunt has left the room, she doesn’t exist anymore.

so, i am writing a scene that has nothing to do with my feature screenplays. maybe this will be my next short film. started this morning…the coffee is overdue. and it’s almost lunch time. I go down to my favorite coffee shop down the street. mumble what i want and get it just like audience gets the hollywood crap. and a banana bread with butter - warmed up. lunch is done, my cup is still half full. i’m back at my desk, typing, I have written maybe a few pages and have deleted countless more. In total, I have 3 pages, going by the page count. 2 and a half is more like it.

who came up with the word film anyways. isn’t that more like a thin coating, a veneer, a membrane, delicate web of filaments, the dictionary says, film is a thin haze, a blur, or mist - that’s starting to sound close except the thin part.

I’m going around in circles

to find the roots of my faults

I know there is history

buried in the roots of all cause.

I see the mistakes inside my head

pain from frozen memories that are desecrated

shoot up in front of my senses

to steal an otherwise wonderful day.

I’m sometimes amazed at my awareness

sometimes I’m lost in my tiredness

my face cringes, nights bleed into days

like watercolors in the rain,

I remind myself, they’re dreams, they’re nightmares

except I’m awake and I’m going around in circles.

music only track available at www.dibpictures.com , MUSIC page, song 3 - STARLIGHT (click on the fast forward button on the ipod image to skip songs)

CHORUS