Workspace from Craig Moorhead on Vimeo.

So hey hey – there’s this little camera I have by my side now called the Canon 7D. It shoots real good still stuff, but it also isn’t too shabby in the video department.

And here is an example of what it can do – a new music video by Hanson that for some reason apes a great sequence from The Blues Brothers. Regardless, it was all shot on 7D with Nikon lenses, according to Philip Bloom.

Anyway – it’s pretty exciting to see this kind of quality come out of this camera I got for the sole purpose of shooting something that looks this good.

Here’s a video where some jerk spouts off about how the juxtaposition of images tells a story and builds a character:

I just saw this show Yank! in NYC at the York Theater. If you’re up that way, you need to go check it out. It’s about two soldiers who fall in love during World War II and basically what that atmosphere was like, trying to not be gay in the army back then. Did you know there were thousands of gays and lesbians jailed for that junk back then? Straight up jailed.

Anyway, it’s getting tons of good reviews and now is your chance to be the first on your block to see it. Unless you live on my block, because – too late.

—

Dudes – this year is going to be soooooo rad. More on this later.

—

The next album is almost ready to go super live. It will be ‘Speed = Distance / Time’, one of the shortest albums in the whole dang collection. But also the most recent and best!

It’s going to be available for download as a name your price type of deal (and yes, $0 is one of the prices) and it will also be available as a physical CD, with totally cool design and liner notes and stuff that you and the family can all sit around and enjoy while listening to the songs. In fact, the liner notes may be even more enjoyable than the songs. There’s only one way to be sure – give ‘er a try.

The physical CD will be available for $9.99. I know that’s seems like more than $0.00, but it’s really not. All proceeds will go to Baron Von Records for to produce a new and even MORE special album. So please – give what you can, even if it is just a sympathetic ear.

—

I’ve started a new, more horror-centric blog called ‘Your Guignol is Grand‘ that will basically take any horror themed content from this blog and host it over there, too. So if the only reason you come here is for horror stuff, ‘Guignol’ may be more your cup of tea. But if you’re in it for the full Craig-xperience, this is the place to be.

—

I’m gonna have to change this site design yet again. Thought I’d solved all the problems of the last one, but now this one only displays correctly in Firefox. If you’re seeing a big blue box on the left that says “Most Popular Articles” – that’s the footer. You can imagine my frustration. So screw it. A new design will be coming soon.

Via Bill Cunningham’s Pulp 2.0, found this archive of cool photos of miniatures, all of which pretty much blow my mind. I love this kind of trickery. This is all work by a dude named Michael Paul Smith.

This is just genius stuff. I’d love to make something that requires miniatures some day. And matte paintings. All that practical type stuff. I’m working on this monster movie idea right now and it would be so amazing if you could make it with this olden technology. Basically like The Blob. Or maybe just use CG to make everything look like miniatures and matte paintings. Really – some of this stuff cannot be improved upon by computers.

That’s right – I’m about to watch Wrong Turn 3 which, if you’re keeping count, is the third installment in the Wrong Turn series. Most people didn’t like the first movie. Loads more never even saw the second. And now here comes the third and, since it hasn’t been released yet, even fewer have seen this one.

I, however, am different from those people for three reasons:

1) I liked the first movie
2) I liked the second movie
3) I have the third movie in my home right now

Direct-to-video movies don’t have to be bad, but usually they are. There’s a lower bar for them when it comes to expectations which seems to fuel an apathetic approach to the material. Take, for instance, a little movie called P. Please. No really, please take this movie far, far away from the rest of us. We will sing of your glories and praise you as a hero. Because this is the kind of movie that makes direct-to-video look bad.

On the other hand, Wrong Turn 2 was a movie that made direct-to-video look good. Very good. It’s easily one of the best direct-to-video horror movies ever made, and while it might have seemed anemic if it had been seen in theaters, somehow it fills up the home screen in every way it possibly can. Really. Not enough can be said about that DVD.

And so I’m about to watch Wrong Turn 3. I’ll let you know how it is. Here we go.

Edit to add: It stinks.

I love gore. Not in real life, mind you. I mean, I have no problem with seeing a little blood, but real life guts I can do without. I’m actually fairly squeamish when it comes to actual injuries. But in a horror movie, I love it and always have. I started buying Fangorias off the shelf when I was about 12 years old. That whole horror dry spell between 1986 and 1995? I was probably the #1 supporter of horror films during that time, for two reasons – 1) because of my love for horror and gore, as I mentioned earlier and 2) because as 12-years-old, what the hell did I know about what’s good or not? read more »

Continuing where I left off…

Which brings us to ‘The Blair Witch Project’. I’m not sure there’s a horror movie with a lower-budget and a bigger response. The fact they were able to pull off such a gigantic prank for so long – that it was an actual documentary and this actually did happen – is something I’m jealous of. Because of ‘Blair Witch’, this can never happen again. At least, not in the same way. It does seem a bit flash-in-the-pan-ish now – I never hear anyone bring up ‘Blair Witch’ anymore unless they’re pointing out how much money can be made from low-budget horror. No one says “I want to do this just like they did in Blair Witch.” It’s an idea that came right at the right moment and then ran far away. This movie scared the crap out of me when I saw it in the theater, but I’ve never watched a frame of it since. Interesting that something can swing that far in both directions.

When this sucker went to Sundance, the alleged budget was around $35k to $60k. You’ll still find that number on most sites that list such info, but by the time it went out to theaters, it had cost Artisan – who bought it for $1.1m – around $30m total, with marketing, etc. Still, not a bad gamble on their part, considering it went on to earn nearly $250m.

And nothing since then seems to have come close to this kind of sensation as much as the upcoming ‘Paranormal Activity’, touted as having a budget of $10k. It definitely looks like a pretty scaled down film, trading on a sort of documentary feel like ‘Blair Witch’. According the trailer, the story seems to concern a couple living in a house they think is haunted and setting up cameras to capture any of the possible paranormal activity. The trailer itself doesn’t seem overly terrifying, but hopefully the scary is going to come from a slow boil over the course of a 90 minute movie. This one has gotten raves all over the place. Will it be the second coming or a dud? We’ll see.

The $10k price tag, like ‘Blair Witch’, is probably all blown to hell now, though by how much it’s hard to say. Where ‘Blair Witch’ opened wide after a few weeks in major cities, ‘Paranormal’ seems to be rolling out mainly in colleges, its website set up to gauge where its audience is before they start booking dates. A pretty great idea and with the press the movie is getting, this could work out amazingly well. Interesting to note, too, that it is not being sold as anything real. Funny to think we’re too far beyond that idea to get tricked into it again.

More to come…

So there’s a review for a movie called ‘Nightmare Castle’ up over at The DVD Lounge and if you look closely, you’ll see that it was written by me. If you have a second, click on over and check it out, maybe leave a comment or two and help support my pack-a-day DVD habit.

There are many interesting things about ‘Nightmare Castle’ – the director, Mario Caiano, directs as Allen Grunewald, for instance – but one thing I don’t really get into in the review, but probably should have – this was Ennio Morricone’s second movie. The music bounces back and forth between two sources – a shock organ sort of thing and a lilting piano piece that plays a fairly integral part in the movie. read more »

Thinking about low-budget one location horror and how it gets made and how it gets made well. First movie that always comes to mind is ‘Evil Dead’, which is pretty genius as low-budget one location horror goes. There’s not a slow moment in it and most of it is really just one guy going nuts in a broken down house in the woods. It’s survival horror, so there aren’t really any huge plot twists or big reveals – it’s a straight line. You know there’s gonna be monsters and there’s sure enough monsters. It skates uneasily between comedy and horror and Bruce Campbell carries it. It’s hard to imagine this movie coming together a different way.

But man – so simple! Apparently they raised somewhere between $350k and $375k from dentists. They’d go to dinner parties, show off a gross-out five minute reel of what they wanted to do and the dentists would hand out the dough. Can that be true? Maybe. read more »

As reported by just about every site in my blawglines (Pulp 2.0, for instance), Marvel Studios is apparently going to start up a writing program – a one year deal to develop new talent for Marvel movies. But check out the quote about the terms:

“Among other things, the contract gives Marvel ownership over everything the writers create during the one year term of [the] deal, plus a first look and last refusal to any and all projects the writers have previously written or will write for 24 months in the future.”

I’ve heard this complaint coming out of the Marvel factory – about their draconian terms on artists who create and maintain their domination in the comic book world. Maybe getting a real start is worth this kind of deal. I guess if the money they pay for that year allows you to live somewhat comfortably, it could be. On the other hand – you have to come to them with EVERYTHING for the next two years? Couldn’t they control their competition to an extent that way? And thereby arbitrarily wreck you? Would other studios want to deal with you if they knew Marvel had this control over your work? I wonder.

What do you think?

Here’s some old junk that I co-wrote and edited five or so years ago now. Keep in mind we had to make this, soup to nuts, in a weekend. Good fun. Enjoy.

Glancing at Epstein’s blog this morning, I see mention of a site called Beneflix.com. The idea with Beneflix is that, as a filmmaker, you get financial support from the users of the site and in return they get to vote on what happens in your movie. So, in effect, Beneflix is bringing together the ass ends of the studio system and the independent world – you’ll still have no money to work with and you won’t have any control over how you tell your story.

That idea that Keith Gordon was pushing a few years back seemed much cooler – to buy stock in his movie ‘Billy Dead’ through an IPO and then hope for a hit. The stock holders have no say over his movie, but if it succeeds, they are rewarded for their support. This should be an easier thing to do. Though, that was five years ago… and there is no ‘Billy Dead’ to show for it.

That’s the saddest thing of all – The Beneflix Corporation will probably generate more material than a talented filmmaker…

This post from Jamie Stuart on Ted Hope’s blog yesterday is a great read – it really cuts to the heart of what bothers me about a lot of DIY filmmaking on the internet and the belief that going online is sort of the holy grail in terms of competing with the studio system.

I agree particularly with this:

…The internet is not the savior. The internet is great for sales and marketing, but it’s a lousy delivery method. The quality is terrible. I’ve never looked at the internet as anything other than a means to get exposure and establish myself — so I can get OFF the internet and make real features.

A whole host of good points in there, though. Go check it out.

So Entertainment Weekly continues to move toward its inevitable fusion with Us Weekly with this column: 25 Greatest Active Film Directors.

Not to belittle anyone on the list – they’ve all done their share of great work – but do you think Jon Favreau would tell you he thinks Elf stands above Chinatown? You think Zack Snyder would say 300 kicks Blue Velvet’s ass?

Granted, these lists are always for crap. But this one is especially sloppy – Peter Jackson above Martin Scorsese? James Cameron above the Coen Brothers?

But heck – why not put my money where my mouth is? At least I’d know I have some money.

Here’s my own top 25 – based on everything they’ve ever done. read more »

I found an article on the New Yorker site about what goes in to marketing movies. Most of this stuff I already knew, but I love the psychology involved – identifying the “problems” of a movie and sometimes just outright distracting audiences from what the film is actually about. Remember the ad campaign for Stepmom? I remember that one only because I was so surprised to find out later it was about Susan Sarandon dying of cancer. It looked like some sort of catty sass-fest, judging from how it was sold.

I could never do it – mainly because it doesn’t make sense to me. I love and hate movies in all four quadrants. But it’s interesting to think about in terms of how the business side looks at the creative side.

Anyway, here’s a clip of the article: read more »

I listen to enough podcasts and read enough Varietys to know that there’s anxiety in the entertainment business over what to do about this internet thing. I don’t understand this anxiety at all. I imagine its mostly about how to best make money off of the thing, but it also seems to be about how TV series and movies will change with this shift to web-based outlets.

And I can’t figure out at all why they would have to change.

It’s getting harder to tell the difference between my computer and my TV every day. In fact, I have a computer hooked up to my TV right now and it’s where we watch most broadcast TV shows. Besides the clumsy web browser navigation, there’s not much difference between this and cable.

Sometimes an article will point out that YouTube puts out more videos in 6 months than TV has in its entire lifetime, as if this is some indicator that the audience is hungrier for YouTube than a show from the networks. But if every jerk-off in the world could upload a video of somebody getting hit in the nuts to NBC, they’d do it, simply because people are narcissistic like that (I’ve got my own stuff up there, you bet). read more »