Some people just know how to make cinema.
‘Back to Solitude’, a short film by Joschka Laukeninks.
Wow. I’ve thought a lot about cinematography and lighting over the last couple of days, and how to raise the quality bar on our projects here at Dunya. This film not only delivers on the promise of beautiful imagery in a DSLR/digital-filmmaking world, but takes everything to the next level, from music to casting to structure and beyond.
Five days of shooting, six months of post-production, and some quintessential überdeutsch narrator voice that almost rivals Werner Herzog.
Watch this film. Love it. Then check out Joschka’s Vimeo page for another short and a bunch of video goodness.
This afternoon I decided to just go ahead and finish up a short film that we shot on a whim this February. 1.5 hours turned into 7 (editing is the one thing in life I can do with no sense of time, laziness, or anything but joy, really) and here it is!
Jinx. It’s a short film that Shyam Valera and I wrote for an assignment in high school: make a film with no dialogue. So we did, but were exempt from handing it in because we were organizing our 3rd-annual city-wide film festival, so about a year later, when I was finally a video camera owner, we decided it was time to make something and this was just sitting there as a fun little idea.
So we shot during Olympic break (the Olympics took our school’s busses, so class was out) with help from Kevin Lam, Mannan Ahmed, and Dan Johnson. Total writing time ~2/3 hours, total shooting time ~8/9 hours, total editing/colour/visual effects (my 1st ever VFX shot is in there! See if you can catch it :D)/post time ~30 hours, I’d guess.
I hope everyone enjoys it— it’s not much, and there are definitely glaring flaws, but if you cracked a smile then I think it was a success. Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for watching!
-Kashif
PS I JUST WATCHED (half of) WILLOW SMITHS WHIP-MY-HAIR SONG AND I TOTALLY GET WHY IT’S A BIG DEAL NOW
I can’t wait to get a chance to finish up this film, Jinx. The problem is that the longer I take, the higher the expectations rise, but it was all really just an excuse to hang out with some friends, which caused a lack of finesse in the filmmaking that’s drawing out the post-production process just to make it watchable.
A glasses-free Kevin Lam makes an appearance in this still. I say glasses-free because they were violently removed for him by a soccer ball moments before this shot. True story.
If you don’t like reading words, you’ll love this description:
Started shooting a new short today. Here is some extra footage.
There is no longer any doubt in my mind that DSLRs are potent tools for real filmmaking. shot on the Canon 7D by Eliot Rausch Luke Korver, and Matt Taylor, this short-form doc captures a beloved dog’s life as it comes to a close.
Beautiful, touching, and near-impossible to make or see without modern technology.
Coming Soon…
Posted via email from Kashif Pasta on posterous.com | Comment »
K I know there are typos, i’m on an iPod. Will be fixed soon.
At this time next week, we should (Insh’Allah) be done shooting a new short film, “The Impractical Job”. It’s the story of a man (Ben Wright) who decides to rob a video game store so he can trade the games back in and buy himself some tap dance shoes.
We actually filmed about 85% of it in March 2007, but, due mostly to technical difficulties and partly to insufficient effort on my part, it didn’t make it all the way to online release.
I’ve wanted to reshoot for a while now, and my lazy side just this afternoon forgave my proactive side for telling Ben that I was interested in reshoots over spring break and thus essentially commiting to following through. When the thought crossed my mind that I only did one fictional narrative film in all of 2008, and even that for a pressure-on 48 hour film competition, I realized I actually WANT to do this. I’ve been all talk, no action - exactly the kind of person I don’t like.
So as I kick into high gear on Montage 2009 (our district-wide film festval), I figure I might as well do the same on the film side while getting scholarship applcations sorted. I knew I worked well under pressure, I just didn’t realize it was so crucial to my sucess.
Screenplay rewrites tommorrow. Let’s do this.
