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You can also download a higher-resolution Quicktime at http://www.dvxfest.com/mirror/betrayal2010/entries/Dead_Drop-dougspice.mov

This film has been submitted as part of DVXfest, which despite the name is open to short films shot on all cameras on a specific theme. This season’s theme is “betrayal.”

If you have a spare moment, the festival is open to voting from the public – but you only have to vote ONCE, none of this “come back every day” nonsense. There are a number of good entries in a whole slew of genres. A couple I’d particularly recommend – that couldn’t be more different from each other – are “xepoj” and “Occupational Hazards.”  You can see the whole list, rate them, and go to the discussion threads at http://www.dvxfest.com/betrayalfest/

Year One

YEAR ONE

BAD-BAD <——————–X———–> NOT-THAT-BAD

Actually really funny jokes: 3

Actually really funny Michael Cera jokes: 0

Actually really funny Caveman Jokes: 3

Scenes that just end with no resolution: 6

Years that Harold Ramis has been coasting on the success of Groundhog Day: 17

This movie was originally titled Killbots, which is a more accurate, and frankly, more rad, title.  There isn’t really a serial killer per se, and in fact these robots don’t even have hands, or good production design.  What they do have are blades and lasers and electroshock devices suitable for murdering the group of crazy kids who might as well be spending the night in the Camp Crystal Lake Gift Emporium for all the difference it makes.  They wander into the woods, err, mall, hoping to spend the night, drink booze, get a little action, and accidentally awaken Jason, err, the robot security guards.  Ruh roh!  Somebody should have brought their razor gauntlets!

FUN FACT: Bad Movie All-Star John Terlesky, star of the trashy masterwork Deathstalker 2, has a smaller role in this film, and now directs episodes of Castle.  Way to go, John Terlesky!

CHOPPING MALL

BAD-BAD <——————–——X—–> FUN-BAD

Killer robots with hands or humanoid bodies: 0

Exploding heads: 1

Good reasons why these crazy kids are staying in a mall overnight: 0

Ineffective human security guards: 2

Totally effective killer robot security guards: 3

Taglines: 3 (”Buy or die…” “Half off is just the beginning…” “Where shopping costs you an arm and a leg!”

Well, if you use Apple Mail, fret no more.  Attachment Scanner is a little plugin that scans your email for words that indicate that you think you’ve included an attachment… and then stops you dead in your tracks when you try to hit send!

Now, it doesn’t do the hard work of helping you add an attachment automatically or anything cool like that, but come on, how lazy are you?  This is a nice, free little tool that will give you added peace of mind and a long, healthy, equitable relationship with John Arai Mitchell… nothing more.  Enjoy!

The front page of Yahoo always has some great news headline that makes me click. Their headlines work the opposite way, I think, of how newspapers work, in that they usually don’t tell a lot of information. Scanning through newspaper headlines, or even CNN headlines, you can tell get a good sense of what is going on really fast.

With Yahoo, and a lot of other websites, the headline is not actually meant to inform. It is there to lure you in to reading the whole article. And for me, it always works. I find myself clicking on them all the time. Usually I’m slightly disappointed, but that doesn’t make me less curious the next time.

This Yahoo front page, taken from a few weeks ago, makes me very click-happy. What is the outcry? I want to know! How is the actress’ ad raising questions? Tell me all right now! They usually tell you everything except for one crucial detail, the detail that makes it a “story.” And that’s what you really have to click for. The McDonald’s meal in question was a new burger called the “McItaly,” made with all-Italian beef. If the headline was “McItaly burger sparks outcry in Italy,” which still doesn’t say a lot, I would have surmised that Italy was angry that McDonald’s had named a sandwhich named McItaly for some reason. Probably because of the name. And I would have moved on. But with the headline not including that crucial information, I immediately wondered if McDonald had a new happy meal with chidren’s meat inside. So I had to click.

I suppose fictional stories work the same way. You have to leave some things to the imagination. You’ve got to get readers to bite.

So, in the information age, how do you decide which crucial information should be left out?

New Rose Hotel

Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead combines the worst elements of Saw with no elements of Joy Ride (a film I highly recommend) to create a film where a deranged trucker tortures people with no apparent motive.  We do learn that Rusty Nail, the mystery trucker from the first movie, has a pretty nice house on a palatial country estate, and that there is literally nothing that could happen to the young rapscallions in his path that could incite them to call the cops.  It’s possible the movie takes place in an alternate reality where there are no police, but if that’s the case, there was a more interesting film to be made about that world.

JOY RIDE 2: DEAD AHEAD

BAD-BAD <——————X–———–> FUN-BAD

Number of characters (out of 4) that you actively want to die: 2

Gratuitous topless dudes: 1

Gratuitous topless girls: 2

Gratuitous topless girls who are corpses: 1

Appropriate nicknames for the male lead: Choting Tainsley, Tannum Chatbot, Chase’em Shirtless

In case you would like to buy a coffee mug with the New Rose Hotel poster on it, go here!

That’s right, they’re ski/snowboard/whatever goggles that have a live heads-up display feeding you moment-by-moment data on your speed, direction, temperature, whatever you like.  Basically, it turns you into a living human F-16.  Pretty badass, right?  At $350, even I am tempted to buy a pair, and I’ve never been snowboarding in my entire life.  That’s how cool they are… in theory.

So how the hell do you make a promo video for something so badass that fails to actually show you an immersive simulation of what it’s like to actually wear them??

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As someone who’s spent a lot of time creating exactly this kind of video, I’m really disappointed in this obvious oversight which makes me wonder… did they somehow manage to make this product not cool?

Read all about it!

More stills and stories from the shoot inside!  Click the link!  Do it!

This is a big story writ small, and one of my goals for this shoot was to strip everything down to the barest essentials and see what we could pull off with the smallest amount of people, smallest amount of resources, and the smallest camera. Just to throw a further kink into the situation (and my wallet) I decided that the only place this film could be shot was on the Salton Sea, 3+ hours from home.  You wouldn’t be the first person to call me a lunatic or a fool.

This hodge-podge of gadgetry was our camera rig, built around a wee tiny little Panasonic GH1.

People in the desert doing something shady. Imagine that.

Myself and Ryan Sturz observe the shot while Nick Lentz prepares to taze Natasha Bedu in the head for no good reason.

Obviously, when working on a shoestring far from home there are going to be some problems, but as of last night we have wrapped photography!  Many thanks to all of the people who helped make this delusional venture possible:  Bud Watson, Chris Starr, Alisha Seaton, Ryan Sturz, Natasha Bedu, Nick Lentz, Aaron Bennett, Keith Schwebel, Charla Teeters, and of course everyone here at Psychic Bunny.  I couldn’t have done it without your help.  I think the final product will show the wonderful result of your efforts.

I try not to get hit by yet another car while Natasha Bedu and Nick Lentz don't do anything to help whatsoever.

Nick Lentz reviews a shot with me because I told him it would look cool. Probably, it was actually a rickroll.

Nick Lentz questions what the hell we're doing with our lives, and I fabricate a semi-believable answer. Chris Starr doesn't entirely buy it.

The enormity of the sky makes all of our futile gestures as humans unimaginably irrelevant, yet again.

Bizarre phasemorph versions of Chris Starr and Bud Watson use alien witchcraft to summon the superstorm that will destroy humanity. This is not plot description from the movie, but something that actually happened.

(All photos courtesy Aaron Bennett.)