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James Steven Beverly

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Everything posted by James Steven Beverly

  1. I'd say write something. Learn a little about screen writing and make up a story about something you know well, like say a snowboarder who gets lost in the mountains, gets injured and must make his way out or maybe a comedy about a snowboarding instructor who like to love them and leave them until he meets a girl who challenges him in ways he never thought possible. Use your reel as part of a film package and shop the package around to investors. Cannes is on now I think and I believe Berlin is coming up in the next few months. You may even be able to get some of your current distributors interested in such a project if they see there is money to be made. Give it a shot. You must have met some people over the last ten years with money they might be willing to invest with someone of your expirience, what have you got to loose, worst they can say is no.
  2. Ah, really!!? what a shame! I wasn'even aware he was ill. Conrad Hall called him "The Prince of Darkness" for his work on The Godfather movies and he truly was in the most wonderful way. His lighting MADE that film cinematically and I've tried to emulate his work every chance I get. His term "Dumptruck Editing" was inspirional to me for showing how important having a vision to a director really is and help define the problems of the modern Hollywood system. I morn his passing. He was one of my most favorite cinematographers and I would have killed to have a genius like that on my set. I'll miss his inspiration and work.
  3. And based on truth, the western Antarctic shelve is irreversably collapsing as we speak, creating a rise in sea levels of over 4 feet in the next century and 10 feet when all is said and done. The series Years of Living Dangerously has shown what scientists and climatologists have proven about climate change, global warming and the predicted effect of that on food production and in the immedate future, higher temperatures especially in the deserts where I happen to live at the moment, is already creating problems. STILL very little in the way of repairing the damage we wrout although wind energy is up over400% and solar panels are becoming far more common but it's still just a drop in the bucket. Dirty coal, dirty oil, dirty money driving dirty agandas run the whole show. Nolan found the rught issue ti expiore for our times and I hope the right people get his point and take it to the next level. I can actually see films like this, themes of an environmental apocalyptic future becoming very popular in the next few years.
  4. Great work, but BEST HANDHELD WORK EVER, Bill Butler, Jaws, 1975!
  5. Well, maybe networking and working on smaller, indie feature productions in your spare time might help you get the type of footage you need to help convince a producer that you have what it takes to join the lighting department for features. I'm a BIG believer in friends hiring friends. Nothing wrong in shmoozing people who can help you particulaely if you bring something to the table like your talent, drive and enthusiasm. Even if you start on the bottom rung as a lighting P.A. despite your expirience, you'll be on a narritive feature set, right in the thick of it, meeting people doing the jobs you'll be doing as you move up in the feature world and as I STONGLY SUSPECT will happen, moving up more quickly than most, given your already proven drive to suceed.
  6. Wow, I'm a little surprised Walken did most of his own dancing. Just one more reason to admire one of my favorite actors of all times!
  7. There's an old saying, what's important isn't how may times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up.
  8. When I plan a project, aspect ratio is one of the first considerations as it immediately from the first frame sets the emotional quality of the piece. I've developing two pictures, Blood Moon Rising and The Hunted which use the wide vista of the animorphic ratio to convey a sence of overwhelming isolation and helpless leaving the proragonists to fend for themselves in a vast wasteland while in Dollie another project I wrote, uses a narrower European Widescreen ratio for a sence of a more claustaphobic, realistic feel. All three are horror films but the demands of each are different. Every element that goes into each and every oe of your frames should have a purpose for being there, a conscious choice you make barring of course those sarandipidous happy accidents you choose to retain because they he enhance your image. The muse en scene of your composition is the culmination of every element of screencraft, framing, lighting, staging, camera movement, set design, location scouting, casting, costumig set dressing, prop elements, makeup, hair, lenses, filters, gels, color pallet, set dressing, sound design, scoring, special FXs, Cgi, all and more effect the final image and that includes the sound elements I mentioned as sound has a very significant influence on how the image is perceived by an audience. All of this has a single purpose, that of envoking emotional responce from an audience. You actally feel a movie moreso than see one.
  9. Kickass video! I had forgotten about it. I wonder how much of Walken was actually in the video and how much was his face layered in. even then he was relitively old so I don't imagine they would allow him to do too much. I also saw some sections that looked ever so slightly off somehow and know the face was image mapped much like Jet Lei in The One when he fought himself. It didn't really bother me though because it was so cool like everything else Christopher Walken ever did!!
  10. Humm, I wonder if they're available to view online. I doubt it. He was pretty private about keeping his secrets. I remember the picture of the 2001 space station out in a field somewhere disgarded. Some kids kicked it apart, destroying it. What a loss to cinema history. Some artifacts were saved though, the moonbus model somebody said they had recovered but the space staion was toi big to get in theur car and when they went back for it, it was in a thousand pieces. I don'remember whar else was saved, a pod minature I think, couple of other things. I'll have to look it up if I can find it again. It might have been on Film-tec.com, I'll have to check.
  11. Oh, it woild be different, alright and possibly, given the subject matter, could have the potential to have been his greatest work. But alas, we'll never know which is a real shame. Speilberg's Lincoln was a tour de force, I wonder what Kubrick could have done with that subject matter. Sparticus had some similarities os there's a tantalizing clue to what he could have done rechnically but Sparticus wasn't his movie, he just directed it so even that doesn't really tell you what he could have done with a historical epic. It really is ashame he couldn't have hung around longer. I miss his style and genius.
  12. Truly GREAT movie, I'll give you that, though I think for Speilberg, this wasn't a movie, it was his entire heritage. He was making an artistic version of the darkest moment in his people's history and everything he is as a being went into that film. I remember him in an interview talking about how painful it was to go on set and live that horror. How he wohld be literally dieecting with tears running down his face and the only way he got through it was by calling up Robin Williams who would joke around for awhile with him until he could feel good enough to go back to work. Just listening to him was heartbreaking. I think that movie changed him. He started exploring darker, more reality based themes in his? work after that experience. I don't know what Kubrick's take on the holicaust would have been bur after seeing Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, I can speculate it would have been VERY dark, disturbing and real. I really would have loved to have seen it. Do you know if there's a script available on it?
  13. It'hard to argue with that statement as well especially when these guys along with a few others like Lucas, Hawks, Capra, Fellini, Welman, Altman, Bergman, Chaplin, Huston, Lynch, Karosawa and honestly several more continue to influence my work, but Kubrick, if you look at his big four films, the true masterpieces A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 A Space Oddesy and The Shining , which I consider the most perfect, greatest horror movie ever made. , you'll find elements in them that are groundbreaking and revolutional while still appealing to a large cross section of the general public. I look a Lean's work, Lawance Of Arabia,, one of the greatest films in the history of cinema, easily in the top 5 greatest movies ever made and still Kubrick will just edge him out as a director with 2001. Maybe it was the obcession to detail that gave him that razor thin edge. I look at one of his slightly lessor films, Barry Lyndon or Lolita. The way he created those worlds. I never liked the script for tBarry Lyndon but I can't take my eyes off the screen when it comes on. The exicution is flawless, the images, breathtaking. Lolita, sheer directorial perfection in guiding actors though dufficult and controversial material without loosing an ounce of impact. when he died while working on Eyes Wide Shut, with all bue reverance to Mr. Speilberg, I would have loved to have seen how Kubrick would have done it, even though he gave Speilberg everything, I KNOW it would have been different. God only knows what he could have done with A.I.
  14. I'll give ya that one, it is subjective and my opinion, but hey, there are a hellava lot of people that would agree with me. But lets not argue. Call it one man's opinion. The more I see Kubrick's work, the more I understand his genius. I stand by my statement if for noone else than myself.
  15. Oh, my mistake. wow, for her age, she's really good. She'll have a great career. I woulda guessed 15 to 17.
  16. Oh, BTW, I honestly also had no problem with the framing and composition at all. I felt it worked well and gave tne piece at quality of discord that worked with the overall ambiance they were trying to achieve. It's not the greatest music video I've ever seen (that woild be David Lee Roth-California Girls. Yeah I know but I don't care, WHOA!) But it ain't bad!
  17. If you think this music video was brillant, thank the choregrapher. I had a ballet scholorship at U.T.E.P. and was a member of a jazz company which I ALSO was on scholorship with. I also taught ballet for a while. The dance moves were a mixture of modern, jazz and ballet and were unlike anything I had ever seen in music video. I was expecting hip-hop but was pleasently suprised. I thought the cinematography was well done, very cinematic with good use of color and ambiance but nothing I hadn'tt seen before in the feature scene although it was great to see that in a music video along with the excellent set dressing which chinched the mood of tne piece. I'm CERTAIN the blown out windows were a concsous choicehwo add tne feeling of isolation by eleminating any other elements outside the room. While I found the cinematogaphy good but not particularly inspirational, what WAS inspirational was the dicotomy between the night like areas of the inner rooms juxtiposed with the brighter yet stilll depressing windowed rooms giving the piece the feel of time passing despite the dancer's continuous movement. THAT was genius. I also think the dancer was older than she appears to be. There's been a trend over the last few years to cultivate that child-like body style in the ballet world for some reason. I don't remember the details but as I recall, it's suppose to be rather unhealthy. As for Kubrick, he deserved every accolade and honor he ever got including the greatest director who ever lived. If you don't believe that, then you simply haven't matured enough in your art to truly aporeciate his genius. That's not to say Welles, Hitchcock, Speilberg, bcott, Scorsese, Coppola, Wylder, Ford or any of the other truly gifted diectors I worship and try to learn from were not great. It simply means Kubick had just enough more to be the greatest.
  18. Maybe not, but they seem to hold a command of the langauge and culture so nture to speculate they probable at least get the gist of what I tried to get across. Why even a British subject like youself I'd be willing to bet, has at least some knowledge of the game although I whould imagine you might prefer a soccer game instead. Understandable. I was sitting right next to my small colectionof childhood baseball artifacts at my desk when I wrote it so that might have had something to do with it. I also have several vintage R/C aircraft, cars and a large sailboat in my office so I could have gone with a flying higher theme or racing across the finishline after being stalled in the pits OR a bright day on a clear blue sea after the storm thing and that doesn't even cover my collection of helmets, toys, weird little objects, hotrod posters and girls, King Tut statue, movie memorabilia, props and cameras. Be thankful I limited it to baseball.
  19. Nobody bats a thousand every time you step to the plate. Some days you're gonna hit nothing but foul balls, swing and strikes or get walked. Its the nature of the game. The trick is to be consistantly good as often as you can, knowing there will be a slump or two you gotta ride out. Now if you're striking out too often at bat, you may wanta address you swing, readjust your style and see how that works out for ya but chances are you'll discover there was nothing wrong with your swing in the first place and you only needed to step back from the plate for a moment, center your stance, then lean in and knock it outta the park. Once you got your swing back, nobody's gonna stand in the way of you and annother homerun.
  20. You have a camera that shoots 720p at 16 fps, what are you complaining about? Peter Fonda stared in a movie shot on a camera that recorded video on anolog audio cassettes and was made for 5 year olds to play with by Fisher-Price. There's ALWAYS gonna be someone who's coming out with a better camera than what you've got. You want to make a movie, here's how you do it. First, you are NOT gonna be making Gone With The Wind, Lawrence of Arabia nor Close Encounters of the Third Kind, , BUT you might be making Nepolean Dynamite, Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill or Eraserhead. Second, ya got no money so ya got to get everything you can for free and that includes people. You're gonna inlist everyone you can whether they know what they're doing or not. As long as YOU know what you're doing it'll work out fine. When I shot footage for The Black Sky, my second AC was my 6 year old niece. I taught her how to slate, mark the board and call out the shot, after about a week, I'd have stacked her up against some pros. I also started out with actors who couldn't act but by the end of the shoot they sure as Hell could. You also need to feed your people. Cassevettes use to make spaghetti and eat with his cast and crew in his home which also happened to be his set. Hotdogs,spaghetti, tuna sandwhiches, koolaid, chips, whatever, just so they feel appreciated. Make the shoot no more than 2weeks, if you're not paying people, its hard to get them to stick around much longer than that and the last thing you need is a half finished movie where your star has walked out because the novelty wore off and they had something better to do. BTW, be sure to have an alternative to shoot vecause even your best friends will flake on you. Keep your main cast to 2 to 3 people with day players that you can shoot around because something wil always come up. Sound is half your movie so be very aware of it. I've seen online videos of people using cell phones to reccord sound. Maybe not your first choice but a viable option if you're flat-ass broke. You may also want to shoot in daylight so you can use reflectors made from styrofoam and foil instead of lights that cost you money to buy and run. There's a TON of low budget tutorials, how to videos, resouces and options on line you can find which includes, software, music, sound FXs many of which are OK for commercial use. AND online distribution is still a viable option should all other options fail. If you want to make a movie, all it takes is the will to do so.
  21. All you can do is learn to set up as quickly as you possibly can and live with what you have. Think practical, utillitarian three point set ups and save the artistic set ups for important scenes. I would imagine the reason your directors want you to do simple set ups in because of financal considerations. He or she doesn't have the money to do a longer shoot than the budget will allow so YOU have to compromise art with practcal necessity. At 19, all you want to do is create art but art takes time and you have to learn to become a journeyman before you can have anyone call you an artist. Speed is essental on any set in the world and pre-planning the shoot us essential to a smooth porduction. You need to do your homework and be prepared the minute you step on set. You can have a lighting set up done before the director has a chance to say a thing if you quick and prepared. It will only take a few shots for the director to see the difference in quality and professionalism in you approach.
  22. AAAHHHH, yeah. Im producing the new Star warz (don't worry about the spelling, Im sure its just a typo) and,ah, you can fly yourself out and pay all your own expenses (and the productions expenses) again, probably just a typo, then we'll talk about my compensation which probably won't cost you (too much) damn typo again maybe, and all we'll do is use your name and track record to promote it (oh and we keep all the money) WOW, what is with all these could but probable are not, typos?!! BTW reading this constitutes a legally binding, iron clad contract which is totally unbreakable so don't even try it, really, you'll never win agreement contract...iron clad. -Sincerely Steve "Mr. Iron Clad "Beverly and thats who you make the check out to... ON the other hand, maybe better, because of tax reasons to just send cash instead. Ill send you the anonimous PO box address and once I get the money from the 12year old kid that brings it across the street from the post office, Ill let you know when to fly in. It may take a few weeks or months so be patient, you will be contacted (if I need more money to pay off my gambling debts) DAMN TYPOS!!!
  23. I had some stop motion tests I did a while ago I recently rediscovered for a story about a lone astronaut that while exploring an unexplored planet inadvertently allows a hostile alien live form onboard trapping him alone with the creature in s[ace and leaving him to fight for his very survival. At the time, CGI was still REALLY expensive and I thought stop motion would be a better bet. It worked reasonably well for a complete stop motion amateur like myself at the time however was nothing that would have been considered realistically compelling . I got involved with my first short film soon after that and forgot about the footage. After revisiting the test, I decided to see if I could use tweening to smooth out the stop motion footage and see if stop motion might be viable for a no-budget picture. I stared looking into it a few hours ago and found Synfig which is VERY COOL and here's why. Here is an open source "tweening" program that might help you clean up your stop motion footage. From what I read, it's actually a very powerful bit of software that can do a lot of things. and did I mention it's FEAKIN' FREE!! I LOVE IT when I find this kind of very cool film making software that doesn't cost a dime. Give it a shot ant let me know what you think!: http://www.synfig.org/cms/ Also there is a format convertor called "Bink" that will convert files to Xvid {among many others you may have to download Xvid unless you already have it on your system} for web streaming which is something I'm doing with my teaser footage. maybe that might help as well. It CERTAINLY helps upload times and the compression isn't horrible considering how much it's been squashed. There is also "Smacker" there but I haven't screwed with that yet: http://www.radgametools.com/
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