Sneak Preview for October 28th: The Men Who Stare At Goats
For the 6th meeting of Sneak Preview, UCLA Extension will be screening, “The Men Who Stare at Goats“.
Remember that online registration for the Winter quarter of Sneak Preview begins November 3rd!
The Guest Speaker will be: Paul Lister (Producer)
Running Time: 93 minutes
Sneak Preview for October 21: Amelia
AFI Fest 2009
AFI Fest is upon us once again.
Tickets go on sale today for the festival which starts on October 30th.
You can also get free tickets to films but I’ve never done it so I can’t tell you how it works. Go here to see how it works.
They will have a special presentation of “North by Northwest“. Whenever I see the movie, I see Cary Grant running through the Wasco fields, which isn’t too far far from where I grew up.
Sneak Preview for October 7th: The Damned United
For the second meeting of the Fall quarter of “Sneak Preview: Contemporary Films and Filmmakers”, the film to be screened will be:
The Guest Speaker will be:
Michael Sheen, Actor
Running Time: 97 minutes
Sneak Preview for September 30th: An Education
Hello Students,
Welcome to the first session of the Fall Quarter of “Sneak Preview: Contemporary Films and Filmmakers”.
The first screening for the quarter will be:
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Running Time: 95 minutes
closing notes from Spain
it’s past midnight on Sunday morning in Spain. I should give you some final updates and thoughts before I close the book on the festival diario.
As you all know, I forgot my firewire cord so there was no editing done this week. I guess I’ll have to do it when I get back to the grind. I already have had a couple notices that my small work inbox is to it’s capacity. Please be aware that I have archived and organised everything I have ever received during my time at Unex. This what happens when you go away for a few days and can’t get to your inbox.
I last left you at the point where we were reaching the final stretch run of the film screenings. Okay, so the screenings concluded yesterday afternoon and there was a break before the awards ceremony at the Tabakalera.
We saw the last films. It felt like the audience was a bit fatigued from either lack of sleep or movied-out as questions seem to be hard to extract from the audience as each film ended. I for one was ready to finish it all as I’ve probably been ‘at work’ for at least 60 hours if you include travel time. As the ‘out-of-competition’ films concluded, I had a brief thought about the entire film series.
I think there was a lot of good stuff in the showcase but there wasn’t too much I have not seen before. Not to be biased but I believe that Nathalie’s was probably the only one that seemed removed from something you’ve seen 100 times.
I got to the Tabakalera at around 730pm (1930) in anticipation of the awards ceremony. I was starting to feel really fatigued and felt like a cold was coming on. I was hoping for the best and looking forward to getting out of there.
As 8pm past, nothing was started. Just like almost any other scheduled thing planned at the Festival, it did not start on time. For a punctual person like myself, it was really bothersome. At about 810pm I was called in by one of the organisers. They were asking me if I knew where Nathalie was located because she had yet to show. I told them I had no idea where she was but I was sure she was going to show. Did she have awards-jittters or did she also catch on to the tardiness of the event start times? In any case, I wasn’t worried. A minute later, Nathalie strolls in. The organisers were frantically running around until they wrangled the rest of the filmmakers, who also arrived late.
At about 825pm, the head of the festival gave a speech which meant to me that the decision was coming soon. Right after he spoke, the head of the jury came up to the podium. Dressed in a bright pink sportscoat and a polka dot tee shirt, he spoke solely in Spanish.
—For the entire screening portion of the festival, we had a headset so that everything was translated in three languages: Spanish, English and French. I took this for granted as I could not understand One thing he was saying. I just held the camera on him and figure if Nathalie was called that I would have a good shot of it. Back to the translation: I was really appreciative of having everything translated and I must say that they were pretty quick to translate. There were a few gaffes such as always pronouncing ‘project’ as “proy-yect”. This bugged me a bit but what are you going to do?? They also called Alfred Hitchcok’s “Psycho”, “Psychosis” on the first day about 10 times. All in all, that sort of translation from above would have really helped me out for my non-screening hours.
and the winner is……. The jury foreman speaking Spanish very fast says something, there’s a delay and then a loud applause. (Nathalie is not announced) The winner of the main prize is the film I thought would win from the beginning. Not because it was good but it had a “official selection: Cannes Festival” before it started. I don’t know if that influenced the Jury or not (I’m sure it did) but it definitely made the film memorable. I thought it was a good movied but should have been seriously penalized for how long it is. Like many films, especially student films, they run far too long. Just like this blahg post. This film was about 25 minutes but was about 15 minutes too long. How can a film with that much excess fat win? It was really good in the other 10 minutes and had the Cannes seal of approval.
I do respect the Jury’s pick. We all know how reliable a jury can be sometimes. Especially in the film community. Then again, it is a jury and it took many different views to decide the winner and I always applaud that. The second place winner (?) was this sentimental film that was the only film shown out of order and had the longest school introduction of any school. The third place winner also fell into the sentimental category but not the same one. I believe the jury felt like the filmmaker was doing something good in giving him any kind of honor but to be honest, the film was probably in the bottom tier if I had my score sheet. Sadly, probably the most marketable film of the group was not mentioned in the top films. It was well done, looked like a professional movie and worked pretty well in all levels. It wasn’t very challenging but it was well done. We come to find out that the student spent 150,000 euros on the project! Rule number 1. Don’t spend that much on all your short films combined let alone one. Don’t do it!!!
In the end, a professor for one of the schools said it best. He was proud that his student was at the festival but believed that pitting student films against one another goes against all the values of what a film school should be all about. I agree with that for the most part. Everyone that was in competition agreed to take part in the festival and knew of the possibility of ‘losing’ and they all probably know that just because this group of people felt like one film was the best, it doesn’t mean that another group would feel like their film is the best. That’s how it goes with Film Festival circuit. And honestly, I would be saying the same things if Nathalie would have won. My advice is to make your movie and don’t care what people think about it.
I wanted to congratulate Nathalie after the winners were announced but I got out of there as soon as I could. I’m not a big fan of small-talk and couple that with the throat soreness, I definitely had no reason in being there. I’m sure I’ll see her around and we can talk about it.
It must also be noted that Nathalie’s film was selected to go to another film festival in Spain. I’m unsure what it’s called but some representative from another festival came up to her after she showed her film and asked her to screen it. I think that’s a success story!
— TODAY:
I finally had one night of decent rest. I got around 7 hours of sleep which is one more hour than I had in the previous three nights combined. I wanted to make sure to get out of Dodge (San Sebastian) as early as possible so I wouldn’t catch some of the others that were in the hotel and say a fake, “I can’t wait to see you again” speech that we both know isn’t true. Fortunately as I checked out, I didn’t see anyone. Since I had no change for the bus, I decided to take in the scenery one last time while walking to the bus stop.
The Festival was great. I wish I had more rest and more ‘free time’ but that just wasn’t built into the schedule. Some people thought I was lucky to visit Spain because it’s like getting paid to have a vacation. If this were only half true. I really dedicated myself to get my job done here and I definitely did that. When I had free time I would answer emails from back home and sometimes update everyone on this blahg. Considering all that, San Sebastian is a very pretty locale. I would definitely come back sometime but only when I was free to do what I wanted all the time and didn’t have 50 pounds of stuff to carry around.
As I walk and take in the nice view, I start to have some shoulder pain. I brought two semi-heavy bags and would usually carry my computer, camera, notepad, hard drives, tapes and camera batteries wherever I went. I took the bus at times but I still would end up having to walk around for at least a few miles with this stuff a day. I thought I would have recovered from the first two days but it wasn’t true. As I made my way down Easso (street), I had to stop a few times and take my luggage off my shoulders as it was almost unbearable to walk anymore. I knew where I was going and my bus left in three hours so I knew I could take my time.
Some of you may ask, “why didn’t you just enjoy yourself on your day off?” I didn’t have a day off! If there was a locker near the bus stop where I could have put my stuff, I would have definitely taken that option but this wasn’t the case. When I arrived to Pio XII (the bus stop in San Sebastian) I was relieved to take the weight of the world off my shoulders. Literally. Those bags really took some joy out of my walk to the bus stop and couldn’t wait to just sit on a bench and get to my computer to try and find a wi-fi spot where I could update the blahg and respond to emails (both professional and personal). As I laid my bags on the floor and sat down on a bench near the bus station, I realized that I didn’t know exactly when my bus was leaving. I had my confirmation number saved on my phone but no paper ticket and couldn’t wait to log into my email account to get my departure time. I open up my laptop and there is No wi-fi connection. I find a connection that is ‘open’ but it’s too weak to connect. I notice that the Astoria 7 hotel has a wi-fi connection so I pick up my bags again and walk to the front of the hotel. As I open firefox, the astoria7 id check-in screen comes up. Bust! I pick up my bags and walk around the neighborhood in search of the “Wi-Fi” logo that you see a lot of in Internet-Friendly communities. Let me rephrase that: You see that a lot in Friendly communities. I walk around the area for awhile and I don’t see anything. I’m hurting again so I slowly make my way back to the bench to regroup.
After regrouping I decide that I will try to find a bus-ticket agency and hopefully with my confirmation number, I can get a hard ticket and that will solve everything. I walk around and notice a few bus ticket agencies and after I ask them if they have access to Alsa bus tickets, they say they do not. I start to get more frustrated as this is supposed to be my ‘day off’. i walk around for an hour more, sitting down every 10 minutes to give my shoulders some rest before I irritate them again. I continue walking and see this cheaply made paper sign that looked like it was written with a Sharpie: “Alsa: Bilbao”. It was the first sign of Alsa I’ve seen so I decided to jump on it. I walk in and immediately see the Alsa logo outside the ticket window. This was the equivalent of a Bus speakeasie. Alsa definitely didn’t do itself any favours for business by the poor display of their logo Outside the building. After five minutes of back-and-forth with the ticket agent, I get my ticket and I am ready for a nice rest on the bench.
My bus ride to Santander was pretty easy. I even reclined back in my seat for a short time before some guy got on the bus and asked me to set it upright because it probably got too close to his knees. Under normal circumstances I would have held my ground but since I couldn’t debate in Spanish, I took the high road and put my seat in the upright position.
When I get to the Santander airport I go immediately to the Iberia counter to get my boarding pass. Even though I am over 16 hours early, I have no hesitation about my plan. My plan was to get my boarding pass, get some lunch from the one food counter, find a comfortable seat and connect to a Wi-Fi access point that I had hoped to do earlier in the day. I get to the ticket window and the woman says to me, “Your flight is for tomorrow”. I said, “I know. I plan on staying in the terminal. It is open all night? “. She smiles and says, “Yes. That is fine”. I leave the counter, get my 100th euro-coca-cola (coca-cola with cane sugar and not High Fructose Corn syrup). It tastes so much better here. I almost think I’d become an addict like some people are to coffee for their caffeine fixes. I get the meal combo, find a seat and notice an electrical outlet near a seat. Perfect. I get to the seat, plug in my laptop for continual power, put my tray of food to the side and turn on my computer. I nibble at my food until I can access the wi-fi in the terminal. As I select the only free connection, “Telefonica”, It leads me to another pay-to-use page. At this point since I’m going to be at the terminal for over 12 hours, I was more than happy to pay for it. I put in my info and get rejected. I don’t want to waste too much of my battery power trying to explain what went wrong but essentially you have to have a european phone number to purchase the card unless you had a pre-paid telefonico card that I didn’t anticipate that I would need and obviously didn’t have. The worst part of the site is that it has an “english version” but once you click to pay, it once again takes you to a spanish only screen. You should try it out to see what I mean.
I put the blahg posting and my Dream to respond to my emails on hold until I got to Madrid Sunday morning or possibly until I got to O-Hare in Chicago. I eat my lunch/dinner (the first and only meal I had all day). I start to work on miscellaneous projects and notice the waves of people come-and-go in the terminal. As it gets later, the workers for the food counter start to look my direction. I look around and notice that there are only five other people in the terminal with me being the only one in the food counter area. I felt like I was the smart guy because the others were sitting on the uncomfortable seats for the rest of the suckers while I was sitting on cushier seats for patrons of the counter. At around 11pm a security person comes up to me and starts speaking to me in Spanish. I told them I didn’t speak Spanish and he tells me to follow him. After walking for five minutes, this woman with a walkie-talkie comes towards me and asks me why I was still in the terminal.
“I have a flight to catch. Obviously.”
“Well you can’t stay here. The terminal closes at midnight!”
I tell them how I was told that I could stay and If I would have known this earlier I would have caught a bus into Santander instead of directly to the terminal. All they say to me is that there is one more bus that I can catch and if I miss that I have to sleep outside like some Hobo. Actually they just said I’d have to sleep outside the terminal but approximately 100 yards from the entrance. It was pretty strange.
I decided to ‘waste’ the 4 euros to catch the bus-to-and-from the terminal and head into the heart of Santander, where I wrote my first entry this week. I get off the bus and it looks like the bus station is closed. I see a bunch of kids hanging around and a group of taxi drivers getting in their cars and driving off. I guess the city was closing down. Just before I planned to look for the hostels in the area, I see that one door to the bus station is open. I walk in and see that buses are scheduled to come through Santander all night. This means that the bus station will be open all night. As I left San Sebastian I had planned to stay up all night to be on LA time when I got back to LA. If I would have hosteled it, I knew I would have slept and since it would have only been a few hours not only would that be a waste of money, I probably would be more tired.
So here I am in the terminal. When I got down to the lowest level of the station I saw that great “Wi-Fi” logo again. This time it said it was free and that’s how I’m writing now and was able to get to my emails for the day.
A security guard just came up to me and said the station is closing and they are booting me out. It opens again in a few hours so I’ll wander around like an alley-cat and get back to it when they let me back in.
or not. I think this a good signing off point. Only 24 more hours of travel and I’m back. It’s been a long week. Hopefully I’ll have video in the next two weeks.
Day one of the Student Film competition
blahging here again from my hotel room in san sebastian.
Today we finally got to see what others had to offer. It was the first day of the Student Film Festival competition. If you are unaware, the winner gets a large grant from Panavision to make another project as well as participating in the Cannes Film Festival.
Since you won’t have an opportunity to see every film and compare with my notes, I’ll just give a summary of the works and compare it to how our students compare.
First off, all the films shown looked like they had a lot of money put into them. They were either thesis projects or heavily supported by grants from their respective schools. The only problem is that this didn’t mean that they were good. Some projects in fact were not very good. I hope they aren’t reading this! After watching the first half of films (Nathalie has not had her film screened), I am completely confident that the student works that come out of the UCLA Extension Entertainment Studies program are on par, if not consistently better than the works that were shown today. I am unsure if they were saving the best for tomorrow but if I had to go off of what we saw today, I am confident that Nathalie has a chance, despite the fact that her film is by far the shortest film and also the least expensive.
For example, a couple of the films had enough credits to rival an independent Hollywood feature film. I’m serious. Nathalie’s work has only a handful of names for all the credits in the film. Two actors, a DP, herself and her producer Gizem. Remember that this project was one of the projects in the Directing Workshop I course (which has another section beginning next week). She was only given a few weeks to do the work, which included coming up with the concept, shooting it and outputting it.
So in close— if you’re a student in the program or a prospective student reading this, you are at the right place.
I’m being completely honest about this and I will definitely mention this (in a nice way) when I speak tomorrow about our program. I will make sure to add that Extension does train their students to know how to shoot a good image but more importantly, Extension prepares students to consider the quality of the story first before considering what it will look like on screen.
… Other rants: After being here two days, I’m quite annoyed with how things don’t start nearly on time nor do they finish close to when they are supposed to finish. Today was supposed to end around 630pm but it ended up finishing an hour later. I guess that’s the kind of attitude people have over here but for someone trained in the beast known as Kronos, it’s really hard to have that kind of attitude.
I also get bothered when people feel like they need to ask a certain amount of questions when the Q and A portion comes up for a film. It’s okay if one film is more interesting or more unclear that it requires more questions. Since every student in the festival is an adult, I’m sure they won’t be hurt if they wre asked only 3 questions when the person before them was asked 6 questions. I can’t do anything about this though.
As I mentioned, tomorrow I will be talking about our program. We’re given five minutes to explain and I’ll make sure to tackle these subjects:
1. the confusion of ucla and ucla extension
2. the ESPA program. what is it?
3. how the program is for everyone that wants to learn (yet the program attracts the brightest minds around from all over the world).
From meeting students in other programs, it seems that UCLA Extension is only program with a wide range of students. Every other program seems to pull most of their students from the region where they are located. The most exotic case was a student from Colombia attending a school in Barcelona. I can’t wait to mention that our students that either submitted or are in attendance are from: France, Turkey, Spain, Canada, India and Mexico.
As I close the day I’d also like to mention when I got back to my room I had a letter on my bed. I opened it up and it was from the “Etxerat” Association, which means, “Association of relatives foteh Basque political deported, refugees and prisoners”. Totally unexpected and kind of scary. I’ll have to ask the others if they received the same letter on Their bed!!!
It has ne thinking of this great intro to La Haine (even though it has nothing to do with the Etxerat Association or cause.
I may have posted this before.
The REAL San Sebastian
blahging here again from San Sebastian. It’s 11:57pm (spain time) and I just got back from the day one of activities.
I last left off at the International Film School Meeting.
The day consisted of three education blocks.
1. The festival set up the Genesis camera and did a long demo for the students. It was an nice experience for the students but due to the number of students, I feel that some were left out in getting the full experience of the demonstration. Fortunately at UCLA Extension, we have lower enrollment limits so each student is able to work with the cameras in class. This demonstration went until 1230pm or so.
2. Two speakers: Vincent Puig and Jenaro Talens went over film analysis of “Un Chien Andalou” via some timeline software where you can have two side-by-side frames of different movies and also a notebox to write any notes you have about the clip. I didn’t find this as useful as the hands on demo with the Genesis camera.
3. A Few scholars lead a talk called, “Lighting: Les Nouvelle Vagues”. It went over the aesthetic of the French New Wave and how one could imitate that look in contemporary cinema. I would also recommend one purchasing “Breathless” by Criterion. I think that would be a good start.
After the Film Meeting, everyone met up at the Kursaal Centre for the formal introduction of the Jury Committee for the Student Films.
Back Story: Since the start of the day I was asked where our last student, appropriately named Sebastian was located. He was supposed to arrive yesterday and was to serve as the member of the jury. In the chain of command, he was probably more important than myself. When I got in last night I noticed that he didn’t check in. I got back to my hotel and emailed him. When I checked my emails prior to my departure this morning, and received an email from him saying that he got sick last night and would ‘hopefully’ see me around lunchtime today.
When I got to the IFSM this morning, the coordinator of the festival asked me where he was as he was the only jury member that had yet to check in. During our lunch break, instead of eating Lunch, I walked the 1.5 mile trek back to the hotel and emailed him, hoping for a quick response. Nothing came back. When I returned to the IFSM, I ducked when I saw the coordinator. I didn’t want to bring it up but I was told when organising our participation that our jury member needed to be there in order for our film to be judged. I did not want Nathalie’s film to be discredited because our jury member didn’t make it due to an illness.
As we had our long dinner at a restaurant near the Kursaal, the coordinator found me and asked if I had heard anything from Sebastian. I told her that he was sick but said he would be here by lunchtime. Since lunchtime obviously passed, it looked like he wasn’t going to make it. She smiled and in her best English said, “this is not good”. I didn’t tell Nathalie as I still had hopes of him attending.
One hour later, as the formal introduction of the meeting was about to start, it was busy enough to where I could hide away from all the action. As the head of the Festival read the jury members from each school, I thought that they would just omit our school and go with the jury they had in place. When a name was announced, a student would appear from behind the stage and take their place on the podium. The stage was full and I thought that was that….Until… “Representing UCLA Extension, Entertainment Studies” (silence), “Sebastian Calderon”. He appears and takes his place on stage. I look at Nathalie and we were both shocked. It’s like he teleported there because as far as I knew, he wasn’t coming. That moment had to be my highlight of the festival so far.
When speaking to Sebastian, he told me of his journey to the festival. He mentioned that he was sick but had to make to the festival because Extension was a great experience for him and it was an honor for him to represent the program as a jury member. He said he got to San Sebastian less than hour before we were talking. He said he went to where he was staying, checked in, came down to my hotel where I’m staying, couldn’t find it, asked some guy if he knew where it was, and the guy ended up misleading him. Sebastian was lead up the hill and since he is/was sick, this made the climb much more difficult. When he arrived to the top and realized that the hotel wasn’t up there, he started to make his way down. When he started to make his way down, the random guy drove up next to him on his Vespa and drove him down to the hotel. Sebastian got my info and where we were located and took off to the Kursaal Centre. He ended up getting to the formal Introduction of the Jury 10 minutes before his name was called. He said the coordinator was also nervous and glad to see him. That’s what you call love for the program. You’re sick but you still drive 8 hours to represent it in a film festival. As the introduction wrapped up and I formally got to meet him, I called him the Real San Sebastian.
From there, in Spanish style, the coordinators and some students went to a restaurant to discuss some of the logistics of tomorrow’s program. This was not on the schedule. I got home around midnight as noted earlier and have to start back on my walk about 830am tomorrow.
The best part of the night was explaining where I come from and the irony of having a spanish last name but not speaking Spanish. Fortunately most people in the group spoke some English and I was able to get across where I was from and talked a little bit about the program. I think I did a good job at representing the program and I gave out my information to a couple of students that were looking for exactly what our program offers. Sebastian was there to verify what I was saying and helped out a lot with elaborating in Spanish what I could not do. As I said, “the Real San Sebastian”. It looks like a few students may be joining the program based on this experience and that would be something unexpected.
Coming from experience, I think the International Film School Meeting was great but it does not eclipse most lectures you’ll experience in regular Entertainment Studies classes. I’m sure of it.
Sorry for the lack of images, links, videos and copy editing. You know, the stuff you usually get from Blahgs.
