'Bred Crumbs

Gay Marriage, Without All the Waiting

Me rambling elsewhere: "Wholly Matrimony" on Game Girl Advance.

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Cinemaspoilsport

In the end, making a four-minute movie in eight hours was much, much more fun than seeing the result.

Part of that's just me – my gift for seeing the smudges on the pearls. Going into Cinemasports on Saturday, I thought I had a handle on the scope: that this was just a fun experiment, and my smart and funny cohorts and I would turn in something spiffy and have a grand time doing it. Which we did. But I wound up mainly wishing our film had been better, and knowing it could have been.

While everyone else in our group was happy with what we so quickly created, and clamoring for their own copies of our instant art, I've been stuck on what the middle managers call "learnings." We should have been less ambitious, I figure, done something simpler. And we should have been more careful. For example, checking the log sheets might have kept us from kind of, well, accidentally leaving out one scene.

Though several of us were around during editing, none of us noticed what was missing. The omission didn't smack us in the head until the screening. Afterward, the others in the group were surprised, but not ruffled; the audience seemed to enjoy it, they reasoned, and didn't notice anything wrong. But I took it predictably hard.

The environment of the screening didn't help. It started more than an hour late because the sound system was broken. During that hour, the energy that had carried the day escaped me utterly, and I crashed. And the screens were too high, and the chairs were metal and folding, and halfway through the screening of the finished films I was a completely cranky boy with a sore neck and a tired ass. My emotional immune system was down. Let the disappointment virus flourish.

Even taking into account my tendency toward negativity, one fact about our little movie can't be denied: my "acting" is godawful. OK, not entirely; there is one scene where I'm not horrible. But it's a scene that makes no damn sense. Which is more of a detriment than you might think.

Also, before this, I thought there was only one accent I can do. Turns out I can't even hang on to that. Somewhere, Kevin Costner is gloating.

Four days later, everyone else in the group wants tapes, but I don't even want to see it again. I would have expected that I'd have our movie (still under four minutes with the "lost" scene restored) online by now, but I can't do it. If it makes it to the Web, it'll be by someone else's hand.

When it's up, I hope you enjoy it. The fight scene's very cool, and all the other actors are great. While you watch, I'll be cowering in the corner, cloaked in my thespian shame.

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Farscape: Home Wretched Home

Good news/bad news on the Farscape front. The good news is that the "secret" miniseries that's been in production in Australia since December has finally been officially announced, and it will air late this year. The bad news is that's it's on Sci-Fi, the rat-bastard channel that canceled the show in the first place. Really, I think I'd rather the series be mailed to me than be shown there, but I didn't get to vote.

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