Last Night at the Arclight

Dipping my toe back in the blogging waters here, and hoping you won't all kill me for being gone so long, and for writing such an empty post here. Regardless, here I go...

Last night, after work, I headed over to the Arclight for the LA Shorts Fest. A coworker's boyfriend had written a short (Twist of Fate, written by Kirkland Morris) that screened there last night. It was a pretty good film with an interesting premise.

But what impressed me most about the night was how energizing an event like that can be for a filmmaker. Last night, these short filmmakers were the total big shots, at least for the night. Their films played on a giant screen, in a gorgeous and well-known Hollywood venue. They answer questions from the crowd after their films. And some of these films were made for as little as a few hundred dollars!

Making the night even more glamorous was that there was some kind of screening or premiere or something with red carpets, paparazzi, and even stars outside. Here for your viewing confusion, two pictures of stars I spotted on the red carpet, but remember:

low-res bad camera phone + darkness + distance and movement = bad pictures

Thus, you'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you these are pictures of Orlando Bloom and Thandie Newton:



And does anyone recognize this crazy-haired guy? He looked like a director type:



(Again, sorry about the terrible quality.) Anyway, that was cool.

Furthermore, there was such a range of quality up there. Some of the shorts I saw (I think we saw about 8) were laughably bad (I won't mention them by name), others were completely unique, and others fell somewhere in the middle. One interesting short I saw, that I'd like to give a shout out to, was Elroy - The Potato Head Boy. This was a truly unique animated fable that had some really interesting stylistic touches. I'd say it is well worth checking out.

Bottom line, however, is that it makes me want to think more about making a short film. This in conjunction with a pro writer friend of mine telling me he was just directing his first short film this past Sunday and Monday, and also my current participation as a judge in NYC Midnight's 2006 Screenwriter's Challenge. That was also fun and intereting for me, and I got to read a number of scripts with, again, a wide range of skill levels.

One thing I had considered doing was this: once I finally finish Hell on Wheels, then re-writing it as a series of 2- or 3-minute animated shorts and putting them on the web. WAY down the road, but something I toyed with. Of course, a precursor to that is getting back to my writing, which will hopefully become more feasible some time next week. I am getting paid on Friday, and I hope to use most of that check to purchase a brand new laptop, since the other one died, and this desktop is in old and creaky shape. So wish me luck on that endeavor as well!

Anyway, that's that for now. Hope to see you back here, and write to you again sooner rather than later!

Tags: short+films, LA+Shorts+Fest, NYC+midnight