Erkki

I have started recommending 3 Billboards to people even though I wasn’t that big of a fan. It’s been really interesting to observe the different reactions to this film, and different interpretations.

PS. IMHO a better Estonian movie with the same cinematographer (not that it looks similar): Autumn Ball.

Wow, I think this is the first time an Estonian movie has been mentioned here. Cool! I don’t personally value it highly, but I know a lot of people who do. It’s definitely shot beautifully, but for me it didn’t really have a coherent enough story to pull the film together. It’s based on a locally well known book and IMHO the absurdist humor worked well in the book, but not so well as film.

I realized something about what I do and don't like in movies and now I'm completely rewriting what I had so far. I hope it will be much better, but I also feel like I'm getting farther from the original simpler idea and into a territory where I'm trying to make it resemble real movies more and I'm not sure if I can do it well enough. I rewatched Mario Bava's Black Sabbath yesterday and now I feel like I'm a bit under it's influence...

YES!

I'm starting to wonder if I should spend some effort on lighting. I have ordered a LED light and will do some experiments. Ideally I would like part of the film to have lighting like Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, Kill Baby Kill or The Whip and the Body. But I don't know if he got his lighting with expensive gear or if cheap LEDs with gel filters could achieve something similar. Maybe I should buy the digital version of the colors of the dark book. Anyway, I think there's no harm in trying to imitate him, even if it fails in my first film.

Tried it for a second, but I immediately saw that I prefer WriterDuet, which is web-based, though.

I'm trying a screenwriting software called WriterDuet after struggling with OpenOffice Writer. WriterDuet seems pretty good, and makes me focus more on the right things, compared to a plain word processor. I wanted to try a Fountain editor, but they are all for Mac OS X! Absolutely nothing for Windows, it seems. I've actually been thinking of getting some kind of cheapest MacBook, but I haven't really seen the justification yet. I've actually never had a personal laptop, but then again maybe I should not drag my work laptop to film shootings and I definitely see that a computer would be useful to bring...

Had a really hard time coming up with new ideas for screenplays. I had some ideas based on dreams but didn’t really believe in them. Now I remembered a quasi-story a friend has been telling me, some old Russian lady is living below him and gets agitated over the slightest noises. Now we’ll try to turn this into a script and shoot it, with my friend possibly playing both roles. Getting excited again!

I guess if you've decided not to show it in general, don't need to make it available just for me.

BTW Ben, did you shoot Body Swap and is it available to see somewhere? I only read the script on your site.

I guess you can edit it into your post, Ben, I'll reply here. Yeah, it's too difficult for a first narrative thing to shoot, I'm going to try to come up with simpler ideas. And my initial one was even several times more complex so that one is totally shelved for now. Yeah, it's autobiographical, it's pretty close to something that happened to me and I thought about whether that woman really said "help me!" or not for days. I guess it feels disjointed because I just wrote down the experience as I remember it, but my memory is not perfect and a bit fragmented. If I wanted to actually start shooting, maybe I would change a few things. I think the last bit about the camera was a blooper, it was meant to describe camera movement, but the rest of the script didn't so I don't know why I left it in.

I just wrote a first draft of the screenplay for this other idea I had, without any editing or camera instructions. The dialogue is probably shit, but I'd appreciate if you would like to read it and comment (in PM perhaps). Copenhagen - screenplay.pdf

Today I saw Brief Encounter, In a Lonely Place, The Maltese Falcon and In the Realm of the Senses. All were excellent, while I have to warn that the latter is somewhat pornographic. I think my favourite of the four was In a Lonely Place. It's good to have a lazy Sunday filled with nothing but good movies occasionally.

Thanks for the ideas! I think I should generally watch more shorts to get more ideas for them... I only see them occasionally on Mubi, I'm not used to seeking out shorts on my own. I think most people including me are more used to watching feature films than shorts. So at first it's kind of hard to wrap my head around what a short could be. There are so many possibilities... I think it's a good idea to stick to what I have available. Now I just have to come up with an idea that is simple to film that I would also believe in. I just had another idea but it would require a somewhat bigger town than Tallinn... maybe Stockholm. I'm actually possibly going there soon with some people... But I'll try to think of some simpler ideas.

But now I’m realizing that my story might work better as a feature or at least 40-60min movie and leaving something big out seems to leave it less effective. I don’t know if I should try to finish it anyway to see how many pages it comes to or find something smaller immediately...

Black Panther is refreshing as a big budget movie with mostly black actors, but I’m still not into all the superhero shit. I kind of drew some parallels to The Wheel of Time with this, I don’t know if that’s an influence or they both draw from other sources with e.g. the spear maidens who like to laugh at their king.

Mute is a worse disappointment than Warcraft

Thanks for the offer, I might take it up a bit later. I currently just found a way to really make this script I'm working on personal and something that matters to me, rather than focused on the dumb joke that the idea grew out of. So I'm hopeful that I can get a good script from it. But I can already see that it's not going to be easy to shoot, as it has vehicles, action, crowds, probably some visual effects, and a weird machine that I've only heard about and that noone has seen yet (although this last thing is maybe not essential), possibly illegal graffiti and forged license plates. But I really want to get this to a state where I have a finished screenplay and accompanying notes and I could put it in a drawer and think that some day I could shoot this. And when I'm really sure that I'm currently not equipped to shoot it with no budget, then I'll probably be open to going with an easier to shoot script.

Send it to me, I’ll take a look! Patrick, I like it! Will try to see some more Eric Rohmer also, I’ve only seen The Collectioneur or what it’s called.

Well, Ben, I did go that slow. Actually I decided now that the Werner Herzog course is not helping me at this point. I just need to start doing and since there's no real doing without script I started writing a script and am now starting to realize how much goes into making an actual film compared to just editing some random shots together. I'll probably use various resources on YouTube and elsewhere to improve my writing. And also some local guy who has made some music videos approached me after I asked about some gear recommendations on a FB group and started giving me advice and that is also motivating me further...

In the Windows 10 spider solitaire (which is annoying because of the ads but I still play it) you can opt to never get a non-winnable shuffle. I think the game still has the problem that you can't know whether a move leads to a no-win situation, though. So even if the initial deal is winnable, I'm not sure how many moves it could require to get into a non-winnable situation? But I guess that's the point, if you could know then there would be no challenge.

Damn, sad to hear this about the game. It seemed interesting from a couple of trailers, but now i'll skip it.

And after passing through two villages and crossing a river:

Definite continuity error in Stagecoach (check the times):