Christian Filmmakers Forums

There’s a story in there… somewhere.

2010-01-01T16:47:57Z

What would a Christian film made from this look like…?

http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20091231.php

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Damen is a different story. The street of that name was so called in honor of Father Arnold Damen (1815-1890), a Dutch Jesuit priest and Chicago legend. Father Damen founded Holy Family Church in 1860 and what was originally called Saint Ignatius College next door in 1870. (The college half of the school eventually split off and became Loyola University, while the high school part remained on Roosevelt Road as Saint Ignatius College Prep.)

The Holy Family/Saint Ignatius site had two drawbacks. First, when the church was founded, it was in the middle of nowhere. That didn’t bother Father Damen, who correctly foresaw that the church would draw people from all over and become the center of a thriving neighborhood. The second drawback was that it was roughly three-quarters of a mile from 137 (now 558) DeKoven Street, known to posterity as the location of Mrs. O’Leary’s barn. I won’t say the fire that started there on the morning of October 8, 1871, didn’t bother Father Damen, but he had it covered, and therein lies our tale.

When the Great Fire began, the wind was blowing out of the southeast. Holy Family and Saint Ignatius were directly west, and arguably would have escaped the flames had conditions remained unchanged, but Father Damen was taking no chances. In the version of the story I initially heard, he stood on the front porch of Saint Ignatius and prayed to the Almighty to spare his life’s work. This was embroidery. In reality his prayer was offered up in Brooklyn, where he was preaching at the time. No matter; the Lord could hear him there just as well. Father Damen vowed that if his prayers were answered, he would keep seven vigil lights burning before an image of the Virgin.

The wind shifted. Formerly it had been driving the fire toward the outskirts of town; now it began to blow out of the southwest, pushing the fire northeast. You see the implications of this. The church and school were saved. Instead, the conflagration burned down the rest of Chicago.

This story was proudly told by Saint Ignatius supporters for many years as an illustration of divine providence and Father Damen’s clout. Eventually some realized it also indicated a rather narrow sense of priorities, and I notice the Ignatius website, while confirming the essence of the tale, discusses the matter in restrained terms. The City Council, for its part, held no grudges and happily renamed the street after this formidable cleric, no doubt recognizing that you can’t fault a man for putting his arms around the things closest to his heart.

Ã¢â‚¬â€ Cecil Adams

New Zealand

2010-09-01T20:15:29Z

I may be moving with my parents to New Zealand in January.

I was curious to see if anyone here is in New Zealand or knows of Christian filmmakers in New Zealand.

Tiffany

The Official Quote Thread

2007-08-29T17:41:44Z

“Dreams born of the heart are nurtured in the mind and developed on film.” - Kathleen Kennedy

My Job

2010-08-30T01:21:07Z

Point #1

At Mosaic tonight Erwin McManus talked about all the things Jesus left undone. He did the job God gave him, and didn’t try to do everything. This really hit home for me.

So, what’s my job with this web site? What are things I can’t do? Well, this summer has proven how distracting LA can be. I haven’t organized the charity contest I promised to organize. I haven’t gotten stuff fixed on this site. A lot of other plans are sitting in the to-do bin.

This site is a very unique community. Living in LA has shown how really unique and valuable this is. We’re artsy. We’re diverse. We get along. We talk about serious stuff and personal stuff. Communities like this are rare, and they’re pretty much non-existant in the Christian world. If we put a price tag on us, we might be in the $1,000,000s . . . of unrealized future value. But we’re unfinished, and unfinished is worth nothing until it’s finished.

I need help. For instance, Katie has been doing an awesome job bugging me about getting this charity contest organized. We need more people taking initiative and heading up things. This is you.

Point #2

I’d really like help get local story groups started around the country. These would be groups who (1) have fun, (2) share the stories (written, film, whatever) they’re working on and give constructive criticism, (3) have fun. Writers groups are dumb. But some writers groups facilitate things like “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Lord of the Rings” and all the Pixar films, because they have something special that unites the members. Just maybe there is some of this special glue in this community. If possible, I’d like to get some sort of ball rolling on this.

What do you think?

&t=1

Raising Money

2010-08-29T23:52:24Z

This may belong in the Producing & Directing section, and if so, mea culpa.

That said, what are some effective ways to raise money for a film? Say I want to shoot a feature film, how do I get $10k without harassing my family?

I know there are sites like IndieGoGo (just add .com and punch it in your browser), and that’s great, but if I need $10k, I know I’ll need to hit every possible avenue.

So what are the other avenues?

The Actors Fund

2010-08-29T13:36:15Z

...posted in General because per their website they’re for everyone in entertainment…

http://www.actorsfund.org/

Cheers,
Calix

Hand Held Hollywood

2010-08-29T13:11:34Z

Okay, gadget freaks - enjoy!

http://www.handheldhollywood.com/

Cheerfully,
Calix

Internships

2010-08-27T22:05:57Z

I know that some companies (Advent Film Group and Heumoore come to mind off of the top of my head), offer internships on film sets… does anybody know of any other films or film companies that offer internships to high-schoolers/college students?

And does anybody know how to go about getting an internship on a project? (Maybe some people who interned on Come What May, Hero, or other films could help out here…)

I’m interested in pursuing film making, have some scripts of my own I’m working on writing, but I would absolutely love to work on a set that has some people that have been around the block a few times. I need all the knowledge and advice I can get…

Thanks!

-Seth

James Cameron: I want to compete with ‘Star Wars’ and Tolkien

2010-08-26T06:52:48Z

I thought yall all might enjoy this.

I haven’t seen “Avatar” but i doubt it will rise to the level of “Star Wars” “Star Trek” and definitely not Tolkien (But I’m a little biased about that one because LOTR is my favorite movie, book, and any video i happen to play set in middle earth)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/08/james-cameron-i-want-to-compete-with-star-wars-tolkien.html

Apparently, there’s no such thing as a quiet little corner of the world when your name is James Cameron. “Welcome to the wind tunnel,” the 56-year-old filmmaker said as a Santa Monica sea breeze gusted through the French doors of his beachside hotel room on a recent afternoon. A hard-backed “Avatar” poster flew off a tripod stand in the corner and the filmmaker chuckled.

“Look at that, Neytiri just leaps at you the moment you walk in the room.”

Surprise attacks and second winds are fitting imagery these days. “Avatar,” the December release that stands as the highest-grossing film in history and was still showing on 500 screens as recently as mid-April, will return to theaters Friday with nine minutes of additional footage and somewhat uncertain ambitions.

The ubiquitous “Avatar” pulled in $2.4 billion in worldwide box office, which raises the question of who the target audience is for the release of “Avatar: Special Edition” — how can moviegoers miss a film if it never really went away? More than that, “Avatar” now stands as the bestselling Blu-ray ever and in its first three weeks on shelves the film sold a record-breaking 19 million units on DVD and Blu-ray.

“This is the big experiment — we’re coming out after the home-video release and relatively close on the heels of that home-video release,” writer-director Cameron said. “That’s what’s weird about this. Most people would say that ends the life cycle. But we know that there were not enough 3-D screens out there to support two big pictures when ‘Alice in Wonderland’ opened [on March 5] and then ‘How to Train Your Dragon,’ they took half our screens. We know there were a lot of people at that point who wanted to see ‘Avatar’ in 3-D on a big screen. Does all that go away after the home-video release? My instinct is that people who wanted to see it on a big screen will still want to see it on a big screen.”

Cameron says he hopes to pull in moviegoers who typically dislike sci-fi but may have softened their stance while watching “Avatar” win the Golden Globe for best picture and earn top Oscar nominations, including best director and best film. Most of all, though, he is counting on the true-believer constituency being lured back by the new scenes, which include a dramatic hunt sequence that pits Na’vi spears against the sturmbeest, a large herd animal that Cameron calls “Pandora’s answer to a buffalo.”

“I think a large number of people who go see this will be the repeat offenders, absolutely,” Cameron said with a smile. “I didn’t want to do so much that it became a different movie. I wanted it to be the same movie you remembered if you’ve already seen it but with some little special jelly beans along the way. There are some real chunks with some real payoffs in and of themselves but other ones are just little 20-second bits here or 40 seconds there, enough to add a little bit but not enough to break up the flow or the pace. It’s all the same experience but with a little bit more of Pandora.”

As for that additional footage, there are three with the sturmbeest. Why so many? Cameron says two shorter scenes with the burly creature were edited out when that primary hunting sequence ended up on the editing-room floor. “The other little scenes felt like orphans with the big-tuna scene so we took them out as well. Now you see the sturmbeest in the battle scenes toward the end of the film.”

“It’s not all endless stuff of people talking back at the base,” he said. “It’s all CG stuff or a few live-action shots with CG elements. It’s the good stuff. We have another 20 minutes [we could have added] of people talking back at the base, absolutely, but I didn’t think that’s what people wanted to line up for.”

There’s also more of the iridescent rain forest-at-night scenes, a new flying sequence with the banshees, the winged dragon-like creatures that glide past the hovering mountains of Pandora. More compelling from a narrative standpoint, however, is the restored death scene of Tsu’tey (Laz Alonso), the strong, scowling Na’vi tribesman who is betrothed to Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) before the arrival of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as the earthling intruder in the dangerous Eden that is Pandora. Cameron had joked that he faced a near mutiny from his creative team when he decided to chop out the evocative battlefield death scene. Now he concedes that his team might have been right.

“This was a powerful emotional scene that we took out because I thought it was almost too many emotional beats toward the end of the film,” Cameron said. “I was really worried about fatigue. I think subconsciously I was concerned about a 3-D fatigue mixing with an experimental fatigue, and then when we put the film out there I started to think I erred on the conservative side.”

It goes unsaid by Cameron, “Avatar” producer Jon Landau and their team, but there’s a sense that they will be watching the rerelease as a bellwether of the sort of connection that exists between their Pandora mythology and fans. Be it with toy-shelf ventures, video game releases or the wildly ambitious online tie-ins, Cameron and company have approached “Avatar” as a candidate to join “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” as omni-media franchises that inspire pop-cultural tribal followings across decades.

At this point, though, “Avatar” might just as easily go in a different direction and become a cinematic phenomenon with narrower life off the screen — like, say, “The Matrix” or Cameron’s own “Terminator” films. If that happens, it won’t be for lack of trying by Cameron.

The filmmaker, for instance, is finishing a companion novel to “Avatar” that will go further into the characters, the history and the environs presented in the movie’s story. At one point he had hoped the book would be finished in time for linked release with the film last year, but that didn’t happen.

Cameron said it may be on shelves in time for the holidays.

“It gets into the nuts and bolts of the Na’vi culture, their lore and mythology, and has more about Dr. Grace [Sigourney Weaver’s character] and her time on Pandora, but it doesn’t go beyond the end of the film other than to tease a little bit about what’s going to happen next. It will also be the bible for any future publication, a look-up guide for future writers who can come in and work within the world…. Think about all the ‘Star Trek’ novels and how they contradicted each other for a few years and it made it tricky to be a Trekkie for a while.”

The novel will tune Cameron up to write the scripts for the next two “Avatar” films to be released this decade.

“It will steep me in the stuff so I can write the two-film story arc that I want to do next,” Cameron said.

Cameron admires the universes created by George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry and the man who now has the two highest-grossing films of all-time (Cameron’s “Titanic” from 1997 still floats there at No. 2 worldwide with $1.8 billion) openly admits that he aspires to compete with his own cosmic aspirations.

“You’ve got to compete head on with these other epic works of fantasy and fiction, the Tolkiens and the ‘Star Wars’ and the ‘Star Treks,’” Cameron said. “People want a persistent alternate reality to invest themselves in and they want the detail that makes it rich and worth their time. They want to live somewhere else. Like Pandora.”

—Geoff Boucher

Phil Vischer on creating content

2010-08-27T07:47:06Z

In a recent update on What’s in the Bible, Phil Vischer had this to say about making content:

I recently spoke at the national Christian retail show, and, in reference to the shrinking budgets facing Christian producers everywhere, I said that if I have a chance to work with Pixar-sized budgets to produce Pixar-caliber animation, I will. If not, I’m going to grab a puppet and start shooting. Our kids need the content. We need to be resourceful enough to get it to them in as many ways as possible.

Good thought!

Full post: http://whatsinthebible.com/2010/08/27/dvd4isheadedyourway/

—
Jordan