Tossers at Mockfest!

Hey, all -

Tossers is going to be playing Mockfest this Saturday, May 9th at 4 pm. We've played this fest before and it's always a great time.

Hope to see you there!

Danny

Happy New Year, all!

Happy new year! I hope everyone brought in 2009 happy and safe.

Some updates: Tossers (see post below) is out to festivals now, and will hopefully see a lot of activity in this new year. We'll be playing Smogdance - it's a great fest run by wonderful people. We've played there the last two years, and look forward to this one. I'm in the process of expanding Tossers to feature-length - we'll hopefully see more adventures of our crazy frisbee dancers soon.

We'll have a couple more films on our site - Finding Space is a drama we shot a couple years ago. It was ... absolutely insane shooting in that crowded parking lot, but well worth it. Elisa Dyann plays my wife in the film and I think she gives a fantastic performance - we'll have the movie here soon, but for now you can see it on our MySpace site.

We'll also have My Life in Subtitles: A Documentary - after Finding Space, I just wanted to do something ... silly. We had SO much fun shooting this comedy - again with Elisa - and for now you can view the film here.

Next up is a mockumentary that kind of pokes fun at all those UFO documentaries you see - it's about an alien visitation that has a rather strange effect on a small town, called BARSTOW LIGHTS.

And you? What are you working on for this new year?

Danny

Diggin' Mockfest Muchly.

So, Mockfest!

This was the festival’s 2^nd year, and we’ve been there both years (last year with My Life in Subtitles, and this year with Children of Scum: A Retrospective). Festival director G.R. Claveria put together a really nice collection of mockumentary flicks. This year, he could be seen running around with his video camera, taping everything in sight. Co-host Alesha Noice was very charming and engaging, introducing each film (or program of films) and keeping everything running smoothly.

The fest was held at the Vine theatre in Hollywood – really cool single-screen theatre on Hollywood Blvd, normally showing 2^nd or 3^rd run movies. Great location – my only complaint is that, half the time, the air conditioning wasn’t working … so you’d go from the hot outside … to the not-much-cooler inside.

I caught a bunch of flicks, but a couple stood out – if you have a chance to catch them at a future fest, please do:

Virgin Wanted – really well-done mock about a cute 30 year old redhead who wants to lose her virginity to another virgin, so she holds interviews and goes out with the top 3 candidates. Trouble is, her top 3 turn out to be a Racist, an In Denial Gay Guy, and a Stud who’s nowhere near a virgin. Great dialogue and performances by the redhead and the 3 candidates. The comedy never felt forced and was very Guestian, coming very naturally from the characters.

The One That Got Away – clever mock about a guy who’s trying to find Miss Right, but just can’t seem to sustain a lasting relationship … more than likely because he’s a serial killer, and chops up all of his dates. The movie follows him as he tries to reconnect with an old girlfriend who he turns out to have a lot in common with…

Anyway, we had a blast. They’re planning on another fest next year, so check it out if you can.

Danny

Children of Scum keeps on Scummin'!

Hey, all -

We're having a great festival run with Children of Scum: A Retrospective. We won Best Short Film at the Rogue Independent Film Fest, and were Audience Choice for Best Comedy at Smogdance.

Wanted to give a heads up for our next two festivals: first up, we'll be playing the Fallbrook Film Festival (near San Diego) this Saturday 4/26 at 10 pm. More details here: http://fallbrook.bside.com/2008/?_view=_filmdetails&filmId=86874735

We're also playing Mockfest in Hollywood on Saturday May 17th at 5 pm. More details here: http://mockfilmfest.com/

Tell a friend and come see the making of the greatest movie ever, Children of Scum. :-)

Danny

Tossers - That's a wrap!

Slightly past midnight in a parking lot in North Hollywood last Saturday night, we wrapped TOSSERS!, the true(ish) story of the world's fourth gay frisbee dance competition.

Production was pretty smooth - we had Wacky Weather one day (seriously - one minute it was beautiful California sun, the next it was slamming down rain, then gorgeous sun, then HAIL, of all things), but aside from that, it came together swimmingly.

I'll post more pics soon - in the meantime, here's a few pics of the WORLD FAMOUS frisbee dance team Simon & Sherman!

Danny

New SoCal Film starts shooting this weekend!

Hey, all! We're starting production this weekend on our new flick. It's a mockumentary about a gay frisbee dance competition called TOSSERS.

We'll be shooting over the next couple weekends - we'll have some production stills on here for you soon. Wish us luck!

Danny

From the SoCal Film Group mailbag - forming your own film group

I got an email a while back from a filmmaker in New Jersey, and I was woefully tardy in responding. Now that I have, though, I thought I would put some of the more general information here, in hopes it will help anyone else who is thinking about forming their own filmmaking collective similar to SoCal Film Group.

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"Right now, it's just me. Is Wordplay the place to start to seek participants? Or is there an alternative?"

SCFG started off of Wordplay, so that's as good a place to start as any. I wouldn't limit yourself to it, though - if you don't already, check out other filmmaking websites to see if any of the regular posters strike you as being particularly talented, intelligent, perceptive, funny, etc.

See if you can go to face-to-face get togethers to see if their real life personalities match their online personas. A little bit of recon at this step will save you a lot of heartache later - you don't want to invite people who are prima donnas or trolls or flakes in real life, no matter what they seem like online.

Above all else, what you DON'T want to do is go to a dozen filmmaking fora (forums? forii?) and post random requests for group members. Not only is that rude to the people who run the websites, it's likely to blow up in your face when you actually try working with the kind of people who are likely to respond to that kind of "throw requests against the wall to see what sticks" approach. It's far better to hang out at the sites and participate in the discussions, until you have a pretty good idea of the people the most likely to be useful assets to the group. Then send those people private emails, and go from there.

"If members have no experience in filmmaking, what then? Since we're in New Jersey, I don't see participants having equipment or lots of skills. Did you solicit people with these skills?"

We've had mixed results soliciting people with specific skills. Some of them mesh well with the mutual-assistance nature of the group, while others come with the attitude that they're doing us a favor by showing up. Starting from the ground up like you are, I would suggest focusing on storytelling skills and cinematographic talent first, and worry about formal education and cool equipment later. You can do some outstanding stuff with a cheap handicam and some work lights if you have imagination and talent (see La Jetee for an example); but a hundred film school graduates and millions of dollars of equipment is wasted if you don't have a good storyteller at the helm (see everything that Uwe Boll has directed, for example).

With that said, one of the things that works well for us (and is probably the primary reason why we haven't imploded yet) is that we don't judge the quality of each other's work. We used to have formal critique sessions, but they did more damage than good. Some of our members have drastically different ideas of what a "good" film is like, and they're not going to change each other's mind. But, since our group is about helping each other make a lot of different kind of movies, we all seem willing to work on *any* SCFG movie, because we know that the people making that movie will help us make our own movies in the future. If someone wants to make a depressing arty short about a bi-polar lesbian in a wheelchair who pulls out her eyeballs with a spoon, I'll work on it. If someone wants to make a stupid genre film full of poorly-rendered CGI helicopters which randomly explode, I'll work on it. In doing so, I will have built up 'sweat equity' with the makers of those two films, and I know they help me make my brilliant film about a wheelchair-bound lesbian who can make helicopters explode with the power of her magic spoon... :)

"We also don't have the proximity to Hollywood for meetings and networking. Is that a real hindrance?"

I think you'll find that while Hollywood is still a great place to meet people and network, it's not the *only* place anymore. You can find filmmakers everywhere these days, especially since the cost of the equipment has dropped so much in the last 10 years. I bet there's some dude who makes his living producing corporate industrials in South Jersey, who would love to do something creative on film. I bet there are some budding Kevin Smiths who are great with dialogue but need some help with camera and lighting technique. I bet there are a dozen film majors who would like to get more hands-on experience than they're getting at school. You won't know until you try.