STORYBOARD

K here.

So we finally got the storyboard down. I actually outlined, while M did the very beautiful artwork.

If you're so inclinded, here are the scans:




















Yeah, well, nobody said we were Picasso and Rembrant, okay?

We're trying to do the costumes, now. M got a classmate to help with the make-up, and I think we're going to go with a whole Harlem Renaissance feel going on...which should be completely awesome.

Here are some of the styles we're looking at:









I'll be taking pictures during the shoot, so I'll be sure to post more here, plus tips we used while shooting.

Sound good?

KarmaCritic, Fox and Screenwriters

K here.

This showed up in the comments section of "On The Lot" Members Move Out.

From KarmaCritic:

"Just discovered your blog. I'm glad I did! I'm surprised you picked up on our contest after just one day of publishing the promo, but that's why the blogosphere has its reputation :)

I concede the comment about the mystery judge was cheesy... hollywood types dont like a lot of risk, and this trend seems to go up proportionally with how high they are in the totem pole. Its a "if it flops, no one knew I was in it, if it succeeds, I'll come out and jump the bandwagon" kind of thing.

And screenwriters -are- filmmakers! We take anybody who has ever worked above or below the line in any production, studio or indie. If there's no film to enter in the application, any reference to anywhere film that credits you is enough. Thanks for this post, I'm enjoying the rest of your blog, we agree a lot about On The Lot, obviously. Did you know the VP of FOX Branded Media was engaged with us in hand-to-hand combat in Wikipedia?

It was fun: http://www.karmacritic.com/node/276"

Hmm. More updates later when I read and review what happened...

UPDATES!!!

Going through all the information, it seems rather cowardly that those affiliated with FOX would try to censor wikipedia. I mean, it's a free encyclopedia, for Chrissakes, calm down, Fox. You've got an entire station to manipulate.

Regardless of whether or not On The Lot lied about how it does business is one thing, but to repeatedly erase truthful posts on wikipedia simply because you're pissed that your show isn't as hot as you thought it would be is seriously crossing the line.

And House is such a good show, too.

Trading Races

-M in da house, again!



I really want to see this film, I think this is a topic that is totally looked over. Most people don't even know that this is going on. So, I go to the yahoo website and see the poster:




Hmmm. A blond white chick is on the cover. Now, I have no problem with blond white chicks, I personally think Charlize Theron is the baddest blond chick out there. I just don't freaking get why, if the movie is about a Mexican boy searching for his kidnapped sister, there is a white Polish chick on the cover. I mean, seriously. It's that type of nonsense that pisses me off.

As a black woman, I feel as if women of color are always cast aside. It pisses me off, especially since you would think putting the Mexican girl on the cover would pull more heart-strings, since she is A) Cuter and B) a little younger, and therefore more relevent to the child-sex slave story.



Seriously, THIS IS THE STORY!!

I mean, damn, folks! It's 2007, putting a colored person on your poster isn't going to destroy you film! And, even if it does, you should be more honored to have stood up to bigots and racists.

And even if they were scared, why wouldn't they try to put BOTH girls on the cover? I mean, are people THAT uninventive? I would have them both on a bed, makeup, staring out from the poster at the world, or something to that effect.

But then again...

How To Make A Film...The Right Way!

-M in da house!



This beautiful film, entitled "Impressions ofr Africa" was made by youtube member Pimhawinkels on a bolex 16mm with kodak 50 iso Daylight film. The music is by famed group Amadou & Mariam, from the album 'je pense a toi'.

Beautiful! I hope that "Refugee" (our own, homegrown film) looks as beautiful as this!

Isaiah Washington v. TR Knight

K here.


As much as I should be working on another script, I've been so caught up in the whole Grey's Anatomy scandal surrounding Isaiah Washington, Patrick Dempsey and TR Knight. It says a lot about the politics of words, and even might say a thing or two about how private matters can easily turn into public feuds.

In a new interview with openly gay AND black (go figure) Kieth Boykin, Isaiah Washington tells it all.


Isaiah Washington Breaks His Silence In Interview

By Keith Boykin, in pop culture
Friday, June 22 2007, 10:07AM

DEVELOPING STORY -- The phone call caught me off guard. As long as I've been talking and writing about Isaiah Washington, I have never met the man or spoken to him, despite the arguments by some critical commenters that I've "defended" him because of a supposed friendship we have. That's not the case.

Washington called me last Sunday for the first time to speak about the brewing controversy and to tell me his side of the story. It took several days for us to connect, but last night we finally spoke.

I stepped out of a DNC dinner when I received his first call, and Washington told me that he had wanted to call me for six months to share his side of the story but he had declined to do so out of "loyalty" to ABC and Grey's Anatomy's black producer Shonda Rhimes.

Listening To Washington
In his first voicemail message on Sunday, June 17, Washington said he was "trying real hard not to incite an unnecessary war," but he wanted the rest of the story to come out. "A lot of people made a lot of mistakes," he said. Washington said he had "owned up" to his mistakes, but added that there were "some things that happened October 9 on the set that were never addressed, that were covered up," he said. "The truth will set you free," he added. Washington seemed reluctant to disclose the new information then out of fear that it might hurt Shonda Rhimes's show. "Apparently that's what's gotten me in trouble, trying to be loyal and a defender of something that obviously has not been interested in defending me."

Then last night he filled in the details. Washington said he stood behind everything he said in his hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle. "I'm not firing back at anybody else in the cast but T.R. Knight and Katie Heigl because they both know as well as Chandra Wilson knows that T.R. Knight was very tactical in trying to remove me from the show because he knows and I know that I was gagged, and he has been working on a conspiracy to get Patrick Dempsey and myself off the show for the last year and a half."

According to Washington, "He had led me to believe that Patrick Dempsey was so abusive and so horrible to people in a two and half hour conversation on the plane. For two and a half hours, this boy talked me ear off, Keith, about how horrible Patrick Dempsey is and how he needs to be removed from the show. And in my argument, the irony of it is that Patrick happened to show some behavior that was very in line with what T.R. was telling me on the plane and I challenged T.R. to deny it or say this isn't true."

He went on: "All the dirty macking he gave me about Patrick Dempsey led me to believe that Patrick was trying to treat me in a disrepectful manner in the same kind of manner apparently accorded to T.R. that Patrick had treated him. And even to this day, Patrick Dempsey and T.R. still have a rift and are still not on speaking terms. They do not talk to each other...I know Patrick Dempsey has supported me by stating that if there is anyone that needs to be fired it is T.R. Knight because he has created such a negative environment on that set because he felt like he has not been treated and giving the same kind of leading man type of story lines that have been given to Patrick and Isaiah. He felt like his character has been treated very caricatureish and dopey. That's why you see his character changing so signifcantly...This is something that T.R. Knight has been trying to do and using the incident of the so-called F-word that was targeted at him, which is a flat out lie, to blackmail the writers into doing his bidding, and it's not working. The producers are not happy about it, and quite frankly, they think something has gone awry with T.R. Knight... But all of them, including the producers all the way up to Touchstone, are not happy.

"And let me be clear Keith. All of this I'm saying to you has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's gay. He came out October 19 as purely a tactical move to do exactly what he did, get public opinion in an outrage to lead him to believe that he is being picked on because he is gay. He could care less about the gay community."

Speaking Of Washington
To be clear, I have never defended Isaiah Washington's use of the F-word. I have said repeatedly that the word was wrong. But I have also declined to join the army of people who have called for Washington to be fired from Grey's Anatomy. To me, his history of support for the LGBT community argued that he should get the benefit of the doubt. The f-word using Isaiah Washington is not the same man I first saw on the screen playing an openly gay man in Spike Lee's groundbreaking 1996 film Get On The Bus.

Last night Washington told me in no uncertain terms that he had not changed. He said he's still the same person he was before who always believed in respecting everyone regardless of their sexual orientation. He said he supported the gay community in the past and continued to do so today. And it was T.R. Knight, he said, who had pimped the LGBT community. Washington charged that Knight was not on the set the day when the f-word was used, that it wasn't used in a critical way, and that it wasn't used against Knight.

Washington went on to say that he wanted to give me a "scoop" on the story but couldn't do so because I hadn't gotten back to him in time. He pointed me to an article in the Houston Chronicle yesterday that he said was mostly accurate in describing his side of the story.

But assuming he was right about the use of the f-word last fall, why did he use the word again at the Golden Globes in January? When asked that question, Washington told me that he was responding to a reporter in the audience who had yelled a question to him about the incident with T.R. Knight.

I told Washington that the footage I had seen only showed him speaking at the mic and did not seem to show anyone asking a question about the issue. It looked to me as though Washington just started shooting off about the issue for no reason. But Washington said the part of the discussion where the question was asked was cut out from the stories in the media.

I've worked with the media for 20 years, and I think what could have happened was that the questioner was not on camera or on mic, and therefore the question might not have been picked up by the cameras that were hooked up through the mult box to the main microphone.

I spoke to Washington again late last night and by text message early this morning. He told me he was planning to tell all when he appears on Larry King Live on CNN.

"On the Lot" members Move Out

K. here.

It seems we weren't the only ones disappointed with the way "On the Lot" has turned out. The disgruntled-ness (is that even a word?) has spilled on to the forums, where a secret friend of another secret friend informs us (and other Zoe members) that there have been mass "...deleting or editing of our blogs, our posts, film comments...", with a deactivation list that reads "like a who's who ".

Enter KarmaCritic, a website created by filmmakers that got together in the "On the Lot" online community.

Also, from the website:

"This is KarmaCritic's 1st Annual Screenwriting Development Contest. Round 1 starts with a simple 1-page synopsis and the first 5 pages of your screenplay. Round 2 moves on to a treatment and the first 30 pages, round 3 is the full feature-length script. Judges are high powered hollywood producer Tova Laiter (Die Hard 3, Glory, Evita, etc), Jon Brown (represents De Souza, Orr, T.J Scott and Kevin Lund), as well as a special figure too high to disclose publicly at this time. The prize is a professional relationship with them!"

Cheesy references to a high up "mystery judge" aside, it sounds like a really good venture, should you be interested.

The only drawback to this "community" is that only filmmakers--that is, people who have already made a film--are allowed to join.

I wasn't aware that screenwriters weren't a part of the filmmaking industry, but however they want to run it, that's cool.

Funny enough, there's a screenwriting competition: SUBLIM. Check it out.

"On The Lot" a crock of bull

K here.

It has come to my attention, late though I may be, that "On The Lot" isn't really what Steven Spielburg and Mark Burnett say it is.

I've been under the impression that the videos screened each week were done in one week, with materials, money and actors given to the directors from the show. After this one week, they sent the films back to The Lot, where they were screened for the first time in front of a live audience. Sounds about right, right?

WRONG.

According to Rich Copely during an interview with "Ghetta Room" Jason Epperson, the three minute shorts weren't made after the final cut widdled the contestants down to 18. In fact, they weren't even made at any time during the course of the show. From Epperson's own words, here's how it actually went down:

Rich: Tell us about the process of getting on the show in the first place.

Jason: It all started back at the very first of the year. My mother-in-law told me about this competition. I did the search for it and found some information about it.

The crazy thing is, like I told you before, the main thing I do is music videos down in Nashville for some pretty good-sized artists. That’s where I was making the money and feeding my family and paying for bills and all this stuff. I didn’t have a lot of time to do these short films.

So when I first heard about the competition, I took a chance and just put a music video in the competition. There was a music category. But I knew it was not specifically devoted to music video.

I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t want to say “What if?” down the road. So I put it in, because it actually best showcased my work, my talents.

Rich: Which video did you put in?

Jason: The band is called War Within, it’s my brother’s heavy metal band down in Nashville. The song was called Bombs Away.

You see music videos that have a story to them anyway? The beginning of the video is a classroom full of kids, and one kid’s a rebel and the whole classroom starts loving this kid and ripping the classroom apart. It was a fun video. I always heard the hardest thing to direct is kids and animals, and so I thought maybe this would be my best chance to get in, to show I could direct a big room of kids.

I got a phone call after that, to go through an interview process. I had to go down to Atlanta, did an interview, and then I had an assignment to come back home and do another short film in a week. And they pretty much told us that depending on who did the best on this project would get the chance to come out here and be part of the Top 50.

So I did this three-minute short film in a week, submitted it, and two weeks later, they gave me the phone call and said, “Do you want to come to L.A.?”

There you have it. Despite what Spielburg and Burnett have been telling us, this isn't really a "competition" at all. It's a showcase of previously made films with moderate to little funding and without "the best resources the industry has to offer".

What a load of bull. How hard was it to make a reality tv show about filmmaking? Apparantly too hard for Spielburg and Burnett. Honestly, I think they're out of touch, and trying to become relevant through this shady idea really isn't gaining them any new fans.

Marty Martin Goes Home, Hell Freezes Over

K here.


It seems America didn't like Marty Martin last week, voting him off The Lot in a surprise move that I'm sure has Carry Fisher doing brain cartwheels. In fact, after what happened during last week's episode, I wouldn't be surprised if she went crying to Spielburg himself.

Adrianna Costa, whose dress would have gotten her kicked out of most any Catholic school, didn't even wait until the end of the show to announce his departure, and, being the brilliant host she is, said so. What happened to Chelsea Handler, the smarter, prettier, overall better host? Wasn't screwing a producer, you say?

The shorts improved drastically this week. Underwhelming resident Daddy Will Bingham's short about a man who loses his glass eye was pretty standard with some good funny moments, while Jason Epperson's short "Blood Born" shows you why it's not a good idea to waste your life.

Obvious standout Zach Lee, wowed the judges with "Sunshine Girl" a cute little short about a girl who steals the sun. The not-so-lucky "it's my journey" Jessica Brillhart didn't fare well with her confusing "horror" short shot from a tree's perspective.

With the departure of Marty Martin, I wonder how the show will go? I'm hoping the bland days of uninspired contestant/judge banter goes as well. (Along with Hilary.)

In other, not quite irrelevent news, Vote for the Worst has pegged Kenny Luby as their lucky pick, followed by the heading "Hey no one else is watching this show. Might as well try while we wait for Canadian Idol to start, right?"

"On the Lot" continues to Piss Me Off

K here.

Hilary Graham, the woman whose short last week got canned by Michael "we call that a groaner" Bay, was voted to continue on toward the million dollar deal, while one of the best in show, Trever James, got the boot.

Go to the On The Lot website and you'll see Tever's face staring back at you from the "We Say Farewell to..." page. It's supposed to be a homage of sorts, and he even gets his own little exit interview, but between Carrie Fisher's scandalous "Your films are terrible, but you're cute" reference to Kenny Luby, and dead-in-the-eyes Adriana Costa's skimpy, low-end outfits, I just don't know anymore.

The Episode itself was blasé. Kenny embarrassed himself (again) with a film even more wacked out than "Wack Alley Cab". Shira-Lee Shalit pleased the judges with her short "Beeline", while David May wasn't so lucky with his uninspiring "Love at First Shot".

The best (or worst) part of the show was when the unfortunately named Marty Martin scrapped with Princess Leia Carrie Fisher after he premiered his trying-too-hard short "Dance With the Devil".

"Well it certainly seems you're in love with yourself." Fisher quipped, after Martin said he made "Spielburg-size films."

Speilburg-size films? There's a certain level of cockiness that comes along with being a filmmaker, epsecially when you do it in Hollywood. But he doesn't have the charm of Zach Lee, the style of Shalini Kantayya, or the boobs of Adriana Costa.

All he has is a red beard and a penchant for being a douche.

If there's anything I've learned from watching "On the Lot" so far, it's that there are a lot of people in Steven Spielburg's debt. Either that, or Hollywood must really enjoy bad reality tv.