So my friend Erin picked me up from the airport and drove me to Fitzgerald's Hotel on Fremont street, where I'll be sharing a room with Brian Bowers, the producer for the Cleveland division of the 48 Hour Film Project. The rates were incredibly reasonable (somewhere around the lines of $32/night), so split that in half and I'll basically be paying a third the cost for my whole trip of what it'd cost for just one night at the Hilton on the strip. The cab ride over to the convention center is around $12, so split that again and I'll still be saving plenty of money. It's all about being economical.Erin and I origianlly made plans to watch all of the screenings together, but she had some things come up yesterday that she needed to get done, so we said our farewells in front of the hotel and made plans to meet up later after she was done babysitting her niece and nephew. I brought all my bags up to the room and met Brian's girlfriend Amy, who then shared a cab with me over to the Hilton where they would be holding all of the screenings for the films. This sort of threw me off.
It's not a theater. It's a ballroom. The proejctor is beautiful and they have a nice stage sort of set up, but it's still a hotel ballroom...off-yellow textured wallpaper, horrendous floral carpeting, uncomfortable metal-framed chairs...just not what I expected from a movie screening. From what I hear, they usually do set this up in a theater, but this year the Filmapolooza is in association with the NAB show, a film-maker's convention taking place at the hotel. Options for space were limited, so they had to improvise. Okay... I'll give them that.Yesterday was the first two rounds of screenings and if I may be completely candid, I wasn't impressed. Some of the films were just odd, containing little to no story, shoddy camera work and embarrassing displays of acting. This isn't to say that there were a few however, that were clever or done well. "Day Off" was campy and fun to watch. "Subterfuge" had a great sense of quirky humor by using clever cutaways to develop it's characters and "Western Promises" was a brilliant display of handling the 'western' category...without actually shooting a western. This could've been my favorite from the entire day. But films like "Halycon" and that near-slient one from Beijing were beautifully shot, but that's about it. I didn't once see a useful combination of good direction, cinematography and writing. As I've gotten compliments on "The 4th Floor" from many people on these very aspects, including the 48 Hour Judges Panel, this gives me hope. The top ten films go to Cannes Film Festival next month. Keep your fingers crossed.
The previously mentioned films may also be viewed at: www.48.tv/
No comments:
Post a Comment