mkpmedia films

So I just posted two videos out of the mkpmedia archives. I was clearing out my hard drive and came across the following: the first, a short ‘documentary’ on the 9th Annual Tamanawis Secondary Christmas Community Dinner (2006) and 2nd, an ad we were commisioned to make by the Tamanawis Literacy Committee. THe latter was asked of us in the morning, with a completed ad done that night.

Enjoy,
-Kashif

The following are two short films, one comedy and one not, both entitled In God We Trust [neither are religious flicks].

First, from the director of Juno and Thank You For Smoking, Jason Reitman. A genuinely funny little film; the kind that gets you a career as a filmmaker.

And second is a little more serious, and, while it could’ve been two minutes shorter, has an overall good message. Watch the first 1:30 and you’ll get all you need.

Enjoy,
-Kashif

ThinkFilm [or TH!NKFILM, I guess…] just got two great looking trailers up on Apple.com. The first is entitled ‘The Air I Breathe’, which looks a lot like ‘Crash’, but a sort of bigger picture view, steadier camerawork, an awesomer cast, and just general betterness. It stars Kevin Bacon, Forest Whitaker, Andy Garcia, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Brendan Fraser. Looks like a movie I’ll really dig, but I’m also pretty sure it won’t make too much bank, though the star cast might take it far.

Catch the trailer at Apple Trailers now.

Film #2 is the decidedly more important b>’Taxi to the Dark Side’, a documentary from the director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, this one you just need to see for yourself. Really.

Well enjoy that as I go study for final exams, etc…

If you are into filmmaking and this here interview doesn’t inspire you, then you must REALLY hate Mexicans.

It’s an hour long conversation with Charlie Rose, one of the best interviewers ever in my opinion, and ‘The Three Amigos’: directors Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Prizoner of Azkaban, Children of Men), Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel), and Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth). They talk about their latest films (which combined got about 16 Oscar nominations last year) and their past experiences, including how they work together to make each other’s films the best they can be.

I love me some movie trailers. They’re really like their own short films that I see as trying to tell a story more than just advertising a picture. TV spots are ads. Theatrical trailers are more of an art. Sometimes they can make terrible movies look great and vice versa, but every once in a while I come a cross one that i have to watch over and over again. Little Chenier is one of those.

There’s just something about people speaking English…unconventionally that gets me. Same deal with the trailer for ‘No Country For Old Men’ and Leonardo de Caprio in ‘Blood Diamond’ Anyways, watch the trailer for Little Chenier below:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/littlechenier/trailer/

So Michel Gondry has a new movie coming out, called ‘Be Kind, Rewind’.

ANYWAYS, to promote the film, which basically involves Jack Black and Mos Def remaking most of the movies at Mos’ video store when all the tapes get erased, “Gondry will be taking over downtown New York’s Deitch Projects, transforming the Soho art gallery into a “Sweeding movie studio” for the better part of a month starting on January 24th.”

Now I know they’ll never do this in Vancouver due to cost [unless this becomes a moving exhibit], but it would be a pretty dern awesome thing for the National Film Board to set up, right?

Right??

Write. To the NFB. Request it, I s’pose that’s the only way it’ll really happen.

yay for posts that trail off into the distan….

Arrighty,

In stumbling across this video on YouTube [watchitbelow!] from master Wii hacker Johnny Lee (seriously, this dude made Minority Report and the Microsoft Surface more or less real with a laptop and a wiimote), I had an idea. See, the video was about “Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), to track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen”. Basically, he– you know what, just watch the vid:

Awesomeness, right? Well since I pretty much see everything being related to filmmaking, I got thinking: what if this concept was applied to 3D camera tracking?

When, in the post-production of a film, visual effects are added to a moving shot, someone needs to tell the computer where the physical camera is so that it can properly animate it’s camera to match the original footage when placing 3D objects.

So if there were enough cheap cameras on set (maybe even just a couple of wiimotes) to capture a couple of LEDs strapped onto your main camera, couldn’t you just, with the right software, get your camera’s position info during shooting? I’ve always wanted a camera that could do this, but always imagined it with a sensor that recorded some sort of XYZ position in relation to a reference point. I guess that won’t be needed.

Just think if this worked in an ideal environment: Your camera would store info like focal length, shutter, colour, field of view, etc in metadata, and you would have the position of your camera in 3D space. import your footage onto your computer and go wild.

This post might not make too much sense from the tiredness and all setting in, but hopefully it’s given some people more capable than me a starting point for something spectacular.

Oh, and check this. Stu Maschwitz wins.

Hi, welcome to what some websites would call a “feature”. This “feature” is really awesome and will teach you lots and lots.

Yay for features!

The first filmmaking video I so generously wish to share is a must watch. Aww, who am I kidding, they’ll ALL be must watches. Or there’d be no point in posting them. So without further ado, here is George Miller, director of the awesometastic Happy Feet and some other movie where Mel Gibson drives a car, talking about what writing and story really are.

If you’ve never heard of Olde English Sketch Comedy, do yourself a favour, go to their site, and watch every video they’ve ever made. Awesometastic comedy made on a tiny budget and a lot of great writing. Above is one of their more recent sketches, “The Workout”.

Finally a Harry Potter flick that looks like it’ll be as good as the book - I’ve only seen up to the Chamber of Secrets, since the books are so cinematic themselves. The Goblet of Fire trailer looked like too much in a lot of parts, and I didn’t want my imagination ruined, so as soon as iI read the 7th book I’ve got to catch up with the films.

Maybe one day in the future they won’t pul all the the punches for PG and we’ll get the R-rated HP flick that we so badly need. [the guy physically has to etch into his hand in this book. I want to see that.]

FINALLY A GOOD ONE!

P.S. - Props to the trailer editing people for most of the awesomeness.