Business Letters

I got about half way through sending out licensing request letters to companies via e-mail and fax before I realized, I'm sending things to corporations, i.e. actual professionals. Additionally, I'm not a student anymore and even though this is for a student film, if I wanna be taken seriously I need to send this letter looking nice and professional and starting off with the letter looking like it did (just Dear Sir or Madam at the top and nothing else) wasn't gonna cut it.

Anyway, thank GOD for the internet because I would not have remembered correctly how to write a business letter otherwise.

Here's what my original letters looked like:


Here's what a proper business letter should look like:


I was about to start praying that I still had my Writers Express or my Write Source 2000 books. Actually, it kind of makes me wonder if I still do have those books...

Testimonies Premiere Pt. 2

On Sunday I went up to Connecticut (I was about to say down to CT but that doesn't make any sense, I always wanna say down but... yea... it's weird) and saw Testimonies of a Quiet New England Town premier at RAHM High School (Matt Troy's old high school). There must have been at least 700 people there for the turnout, which was amazing.

The film looked great, (as expected of a Matthew Troy - Ivaylo Getov combination) and the overall events of that day was fun-filled, including the reception at the fire house after wards. Provided, the film isn't perfect, I am not afraid to say that it could have used work in some areas, but it's cool and given the limited amount of time that was had to complete the entire production, It's amazing (and also great for its intended use; supplementary educational material, i.e. stuff for teachers to show in classrooms.) Meaning, it's not the greatest story arch/conflict wise but it's true to it's facts (As true as you can get), it intrigues and it's 13 minutes long so it fits well into a classroom time period.

Additionally, I must give Paul Penczner many many kudos because he did well in covering up my production sound blunders with his post sound wizardry.

Continued Joblessness

On Friday I called ABC to see if they had filled the position yet for the position of an Overnight Avid Digitizer I had applied for a week ago; they had. While it did make sense that they didn't want me (I didn't hang up after the phone interview with a very good feeling that it had gone over well), thinking about it later, it felt like a slap in the face. This was a job that I felt more than qualified for because I knew the systems and it was a very simple task so if there was anything I was not familiar with I could easily be run through on it and I would have been fine. However, four years of film school later, even the lowest position of an Overnight (meaning 8PM to 6AM) Avid Digitizer wasn't given to me. It really made me wonder what the hell did I spend 4 years in college for if I can't even get the lowest entry level position in my field of study?

Honestly, it wasn't even like it was real digitizing anyway. It was going to be ingested clips meaning it was already digitized and all I would need to do is download it off an FTP site, import it into avid and organize it into bins, doesn't take too much to know how to do that.

The Confidence Man Pt. 3

After being turned away for the first time (and third attempted viewing) of The Confidence Man three weeks ago on Thursday the 10th, I made my way back over to Pier 40 and The Lilac, this time an hour early and with a friend; I still got turned away... well, sorta.

I had learned from Nick, whom I learned I could insult rather freely on this blog because he refuses to read it... something about getting in trouble by association, a reference to my previous blog blunder with the kind institution of NYU, that the final run of The Confidence Man was this week and its final show would be Saturday night. Saturday night was out because I had grandparents to visit so I made an appointment with my suitemate Junior year and roommate Senior year at NYU, Yeison (pronounced Jason) Rodriguez (he's a neuroscience/computer science major so you can imagine a lot of lan-ing between the two of us while we lived together) to go this past Thursday.

We arrived an hour before the show and put our names on the waiting list. The man at the table said "how many times is this now?" The answer was 3, pending my admission to this particular show. There were a lot of people and we had a sneaking suspicion that because we weren't there for the first time, our place was pushed to the back of the list. However, luckily, Nick and my colorsync teacher Tzipi Trope was there for the show and managed to get in so I stuck around to make sure she followed the correct docent that would take her to the scenes that involved Nick. My hanging around the pier after being rejected for the second time resulted in a quick check of the ship's capacity and then an allowed entrance for myself and my guest.

I got onto the boat but this time I didn't follow any docent, instead, seeing as to how it was going to be my last time aboard the ship to watch this play, I decided to just wander about and see whatever there was to see with Yeison, so after buying a beer and leaving a decent tip to support The Woodshed Collective we casually wandered about the boat for an hour and 40 minutes just enjoying the general bad-ass-ed-ness of the play, witnessing a great amount of things I had not seen before.

My only regret is that I did not give myself the opportunity to go to the play more often because there was still so much that I had missed and wished that I had seen.

Testimonies Premiere

Hey guys! Testimonies of a Quiet New England Town premieres on Sunday in Hebron High School in Hebron CT.

If you don't remember, "Testimonies" (yea, I'm not typing out that long ass name every time, it's just gonna be Testimonies from here on out in this post) was the film that my good friend Matthew Troy directed as his first independent film about three months ago.

I'll post more about the film and the screening after I finally get to see what we worked on at the premiere this Sunday. Additionally, if it goes anywhere aside from just the premiere I'll be sure to post about that as well. Who knows, this may turn into something.

I Knew It!

I was reading manga as I usually do on onemanga and came across this:

Somehow, I've always known girls are like this (not the last panel, I'm talking about the middle panel).

'nuff said, back to more manga reading. AKA my study of Japanese art/storytelling (yea, bullshit, but whatever)

Some Movie Reviews

So I've realized that I haven't really posted much of anything about film recently, which is problematic because that was what this blog was supposed to be about, but recently it's taken on the role of my xanga and picked up a lot of my random bitching and moaning about how miserable the world is, so here's a return to what this blog was supposed to be related to.

Movies I've recently seen:

District 9
The Spirit
9

District 9:
I was sort of apathetic about district 9 because on one side it was way too hyped up but on the other hand it was difficult for me to tune out the rage of my friend who sat next to me and absolutely hated the film. Personally I liked the style and cinematography and hell, the concept was great for me too but the characters were difficult to relate to and therefore everything that happened seemed rather distant and unaffecting. I believe the solution to that issue would be to make the main character less of an ass/less selfish. (everything that motivates him up until the last 5-10 minutes is entirely for his own benefit.

The Spirit
I went into this one expecting a serious attempt at Will Eisner's "The Spirit" and the film noir genre, I shouldn't have. This was clearly one of those movies that recognized how bad it was and just went with it, from Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus smashing a toilet over The Spirit's head (and indeed trapping him in the bowl) to the endless supply of clone flunkies that seem to enjoy dying. This is in no way an angry attempt at making fun of the film, to me it just honestly read as that.

9
I was really excited for this movie, especially when I saw the trailer and even more so when I saw the short it was based off of. After all the hype in my mind I thought it was only ok though, which was disappointing. I think the characters could have been developed more (I don't really know anything about anyone) and that's the film's greatest flaw. I don't feel anything when great adversity is overcome and I don't feel anything when failure falls upon our group of heroes either. There are pluses though, I thought the animation was amazing, backgrounds and character designs breathtaking and the craft in terms of movement, spot on, but at the end of it all the story didn't quite hold up entirely for me. I might just have to watch it again, but yea, it didn't do it for me.


Ok, so that's my return to movies and stuff, hopefully soon I'll have something of my own to show and critique so I'm not just criticizing other people's stuff.