FilmSnobbery.com shines a spotlight on independent filmmakers and their projects, and gives exposure to great films that would otherwise be ignored by the mainstream media.

FilmSnobbery Live! is a web broadcast live interview show that takes an in depth look at the rapidly changing world of indie film. Host and film critic Nic Baisley gets up close and personal with the people at the leading edge of indie film to uncover the stories behind the making of their movies.

You can watch it all happen, and participate in our live chat room, every Thursday night at 10 EST/7 PST

FilmSnobbery.com… a Voice for Indie Film

Christina Rose is a totally delightful actress based in New York and Video20Q was lucky enough to get an interview with this extremely talented young woman.

This singing, dancing, fighting, acting, piano playing whirlwind is hitting the TV and movie world after having experience on the stage in the touring musical Oklahoma. She is working lately with Gary King on ‘Death of the Dead‘ and ‘How Do You Write a Joe Schermann Song‘.

In ‘Death of the Dead‘ which is a horror, comedy action movie, Christina plays Wanda, a sexy variety and a nerdy sort too. High kicks and ninja zombies, does it get any better than that.

Christina will be able to better showcase her musical talents, singing and playing the piano in the movie ‘How Do You Write a Joe Schermann Song‘

In the interview we talk about using improvisation when acting, and the nuts and bolts of being involved in the movie business. There are funny stories that have Christina relates during the interview and she tells me how she enjoys being an actress in New York.

Christina likes to go to premieres of the movies that she is in and enhance the experience for her fans by taking an active involvement in social media. You can find Christina on Twitter and Facebook, so that you can make contact with this incredibly talented actress, singer, dancer, choreographer.

It is pretty obvious that Christina has a great future in front of her and has been working hard since leaving college with theatre work and now with the movies and TV.

Legend of Black Lotus is a re-imagining of the story of Mulan. In his story, an Empress gives birth to a dark-skinned child who is prophesied to restore the war-torn kingdom to glory, but must endure the hardships of slavery to achieve her destiny.

Extended for one more day, every backer who joins Angelo on Kickstarter to help make Legend of Black Lotus will get a free download of Broken Hearts Club. Broken Hearts Club is a romantic comedy drama wherein an apathetic psychiatrist is force to treat and onslaught of melodramatic love-lost couples, and in the process uncovers the root of his distant behaviour that jeopardises his marriage.

For your free download, just visit his profile at Kickstarter . Once you join the growing list of backers you will receive an email, from Angelo with a special link for a digital download of Broken Hearts Club in addition to the perks associated with your donation!

Angelo Bell is a writer, director and an independent producer in Los Angeles whose professional goal is to develop and create engaging and commercially viable, low-budget films. Angelo is an award-winning filmmaker with two best-in-festival wins for El Ride (as producer) and Until Next Time (as consulting producer and editor). In 2007, he set a record at the Los Angeles International Shorts Festival when four of his films were accepted.

I went to see the Knight and day movie at the local movie theatre in Platja d’Aro and enjoyed it thoroughly. But I have to say the screen writer should be shot. If I said to you that I was going to New York and I was looking forward to seeing the homes of the famous actors in Hollywood on the first day of my visit there and on the second day I will check out the cowboys out on the range in Harlem
You might think I was stupid or crazy
But then US writers think they can get away with having the Streets of Sevilla filled with the Bull running event which everyone knows – or nearly everyone knows – takes place in Pamplona.

The whole movie was a stringing together of action sequences that were well shot and made for a engaging movie as evidenced by the number of people that would agree with me that the time goes so quick while watching it. I think if the next movie I see is Shrek then it will be hugely more sensible than was Knight and day.

There is poetic licence and the suspension of WTF in the movies and things that have to be so for the sake of the movie but there are some things like the aforementioned Sevilla joke – that should not be messed with so that the film at least tries to have some credibility. That effort of trying – is what it takes for the viewer to have some hope of achieving the suspension of reality to be able to enjoy the movie by believing what is going on for at least the length of the film.

What do you think? Does it matter if the result is a very entertaining diversion in the cinema while stuffing yourself with popcorn.

News

YouTube has increased the limit allowed for the movies posted on there from ten minutes to fifteen minutes. Good news there seeing as I have sometimes found the 10 minutes to be too short for what I wanted to do.

The interview with Angelo

The first part of the interview with Angelo Bell the Director of films such as Resurrection of Serious Rogers which is The Usual Suspects meets The Professional — a multi-layered neo noir thriller about an assassin who finds redemption in the eyes of a nanny; a drug addicted FBI agent out for justice, a military hero hungry for revenge and the mystery man who controls their fates.

Angelo also made the Broken Hearts Club movie which is a raw relationship drama which after airing at film festivals got broadcast as a series on TV.

Angelo is deeply committed to the independent film movement and supports other filmmakers with their creative endeavours. through his blog at AngeloBell.com. He has been quoted in the Filmmaker Magazine blog and writes about DIY distribution, crowd funding and film sales. Angelo’s articles and film reviews can also be found online at AssociatedContent.com, HubPages.com and Examiner.com.

We had a long chat so I have split this into 2 parts I will publish the second part of the interview with Angelo next week

Academy & Emmy nominated Frederick Marx is either clever or lucky or both because he is able to follow his life’s passion and is able to live it every day. His mission as a filmmaker is “Bearing Witness, Creating Change.” Human change, human transformation – one story at a time.

There is ‘Hoop Dreams’ One of the most acclaimed and successful documentaries ever, HOOP DREAMS tells the story of Arthur Agee, William Gates, and their families over a four and a half year period, covering the boys’ entire high school careers as they pursue the elusive dream of professional basketball success. It is a three hour documentary following two teenage inner city Afro-American lads to play basketball professionally.

Frederick gives back to the film making community to with workshops and talks Speaking topics include:

• Buddhism and Film
• What young filmmakers need to know
• Living a life of mission
• The role of documentary in social justice
• The changing landscape of independent film production and distribution – a 40 year perspective
• Journey From Zanskar and educating your own children
• Take the Zanskar vow – become a social change agent
• The necessity of rites of passage and mentorship for youth

The ‘Journey from Zanskar’ was a topic in the interview that Frederick spoke about in more detail. talking about the ordeals of travelling and shooting film out on the trail. He tells us about what cameras he was using and how he had to make do with other cameras when the main camera no longer was available to him. He got inside the lives of the people that were the subjects of the movie as should happen in a good documentary. The monks were able to tell their story to the world with the help of Frederick, who is clearly a talented and intelligent independent film maker.

I have to admit I learned a lot listening to Frederick and you will not be disappointed in hearing the podcast

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Kurt has been podcasting since 2008 and his topic of interest and expertise is Web Comics
He has interviewed people like David Reddick who created the Legend of Bill and Star Trek comics
Phil Foglio and many other comic artists.

This version of the podcast is the short version concentrating on the video end of things. There is another podcast that is quite a bit longer in which Kurt talks more about the worlrd of comics.

The reason that Kurt is being featured on the Video20Q podcast is because he told me some of hos plans to extend his podcast with video and is going to do the lone gun video interviews at a comic convention taking place in Chicago. Well not quite lone gun as he will have a friend helping him out with the video. He has an inexpensive JVC camera and will be interviewing artists at the show.

Kurt likes the manga and anime influence on comics is a manga fan, comics such as Dragon Ball but grew up with the Marvel style also

We also talk a bit about comic influenced movies such as, Sin City – Frank Miller
Watchmen – which I have not seen yet but Kurt reckons is too long, dry and painful to watch.
Kick ass Movie – story based on comics

Moving from tape to a hard drive camera bought a JVC for 600 dollar with a 80 gb HD
He is working with a friend called mike to record the interviews at the comic conventions
Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame will be at the event also.
Kurt is an Audacity user for the editing of audio, he tells me that he loves the Mac and may think of getting one for when he needs to do the video editing. Kurt has been known to make really long podcasts – up to 3 or 4 hours, he was using Talkshoe for the podcsasting but the quality was bad – still uses it for the hosting of the audio podcasts.

He was or is a World of Warcraft player and that got him into podcasting since 2008 has done 97 episodes, starting with WebComicPlanet.com

Here are a few links for those amongst you interested in the world of comics.

The Drunken Fools – created by Antoine Gagnon, this is the comic that I’m helping co-write based on my character submission Stubby the guardian angel skunk.

Web Comic Planet run by Byron Wilkins it’s a combination collective site run by fellow webcomic creators and links through a database over 2200 webcomic sites. This site also has a batch of tutorials and processes for up and coming webcomic authors and artists from veterans in their fields.

1977 The Comic – is Byron Wilkins actual webcomic site. About 1977 in Chicago loosely based on his life.

Danielle Corsetto, wonderful person and very active in the community

Penny Arcade These two are pretty much the godfathers of Webcomics. They didn’t start the community but they have been the most consistent and successful at it.

Eldon Cowgur created this and I’ll let you decide what you think about Astray 3.

Devils Panties – Jeannie Breeden consistently updates every single day without fail for many many years.

Johnny Saturn created by Scott Story This comic could easily rival DC and Marvel

Here is the trailer for a gritty, dark psychological thriller based in a weather station in the back end of no where up in the mountains. Guns, shooting, sex, and death, this movie is not a chick flick.

Psychological thriller from Russia. A mysterious 18-year-old and two meteorologists are visited by a seductive beauty and her rich husband. When two detectives are sent up to investigate their disappearance, the secrets of their past merge with those of the weather station and they get sucked into a vortex of mistrust, betrayal and murder.

I already have a Canon Vixia HF100 which does HD video & does a good job of it. My friend Paul has a similar Panasonic camera.
What we are both looking for is something in the Prosumer line of video recording devices.
I want a camera that has the 3 CCDs so that I get better quality video & also has better controls that you can find on the better cameras, like focus & zoom rings on the lens for example so that manual features can be better used to enhance the final video clips.

Paul talks to me about his reasons for wanting a Prosumer camera & what he plans to use it for. For Myself I want something that I can capture video for microstock video sites as well as the possibility of doing some corporate work & even some narrative shooting.

Because of my needs I did wonder about the DSLR cameras that also shoot HD video such as the Canon 7D & the Canon 5D Mk2 & even the new Canon T2i. Nikon also have DSLRs that will shoot video. Many good things have been said about these DSLR cameras & their abilities to shoot video.
If you have good glass on them the video is extremely good quality especially in the area of Depth of field. Some people will use depth of field converters on cameras like the EX1 to get the same sort of results

Of course though there are some disadvantages too.
I think the main one is the lack of good audio input – usually you will only find the 3.5mm jack input. Then you would need to use a juiced link or beachtech pre amp to be able to get good results from connecting a XLR type mic. I have connected an XLR mic to my Vixia though just by using a converter connector cable & for what I do it is OK

The other thing with the DSLR is the length of shot you can take. I think the max is going to be about 12 minutes. If you wanted to shoot a conference or maybe other events which are long then you would come up short. I am leaning more towards a proper video camera like the NX5 or the AX2000 from Sony

But Like i said I have seen many posts & reviews of the latest DSLRs in which the film makers are raving about how good they are.

I also comment on using Kinemac, After Effects, and about learning what Motion can do to make a video animation fly through that could be an intro to the videos I make.

This video is made using my new green screen set up in my studio, with the new LED lights I have bought. These lights are work lights that I bought for 25 euro each at Lidl. I got five of them and I might buy another two or three. I used 4 of what I have to light the green screen and the other one to light the subject. I do have one more small video light that is the type you can fit on top of the camera but works well on a light stand as a fill light.
I did put some white gauze material over the light to soften the light and I might at some time see about getting some filters to put on them to warm the light up. Not too necessary because it is easy enough to colour correct in Final Cut. Still have to do some more working out to get the set up right but pleased with the results so far.

I also mention another Mac in the family. My 70 year old mom sent me a text message to tell me she was buying things in the Apple Store in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham. She got a white MacBook and iWork & one on one training to go with it. Tomorrow she will go into the store for them to move her data off her old Windows laptop.

Tell me how you would cope without email and power

Contact me by email !!