We will be screening on September 8th, 2010 at 6:30pm.

Only a maximum of 20 films in each competitive category were chosen to be honored with this prestigious recognition. This means that Santa Ana Winds was among the best of over 1,000 films submitted from over 30 countries around the world. The festival took place between June 4th - 6th, 2010 at the beautiful Las Vegas Hilton Hotel Casino Resort. Santa Ana Winds accepted a Finalist Award at the Closing Night Awards Ceremony on Sunday, June 5.

The Tallahassee Film Festival (TFF), is an annual, independent film festival in Tallahassee, FL. TFF has attracted thousands of visitors to the Big Bend region, including professionals, student filmmakers and film buffs of all ages. TFF offers visitors independent and award-winning film screenings from around the world, plus workshops, lectures and networking opportunities with film industry professionals. The 2010 festival, presented by FCCU, takes place April 8 thru 11 and this year’s theme is See You in the Dark!

In 2009, TFF awarded AFI Thesis film In the Name of the Son Best College Student Film, which then went on to win two of American Film Institute’s most honored awards for directing, the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award and the Rogers Award as well as numerous other Fest Bests. TFF also featured Bohemibot which would later win the 2009 Student Academy Award.

Who:

Cast, Crew, Donors, Volunteers, Friends and Family

What:

Premiere of Santa Ana Winds
DVDs will be available at the Premiere!

Where:

American Film Institute Map It
2021 N. Western Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
In the Mark Goodson Screening Room of the Mayer Library Building (Directions).

When:

Saturday, December 5th, 2009
Hors d’oeuvres & Cocktails Begin at 7:00pm
Screenings at 8:00pm and 9:00pm

I hope I was able to thank everyone personally, but for those that I missed, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and express our team’s gratitude for your contribution to the film. Through the years we have learned that filmmaking is a very collaborative process and no one person is responsible for the success of any film. Santa Ana Winds is no exception. No part is too small and for all of them we are grateful. Thank you.

I would like to give a big shout out to D. Scott Easton, our 1 st Assistant Director on Santa Ana Winds. When our original 1st AD had to leave town for a family emergency two weeks before principle photography, D. Scott came in and took the reigns. By filming at LAX we needed to constantly interface with multiple jurisdictions (TSA, LAWA, LAX Airport Police, LAX Two Corp, Fire Marshals, Electricians, etc.) and even more so, the general public. D. Scott dove right in and guided us through the storm, all while keeping his cool, sharing his inspirational stories and riddles. As a young producer, I have learned a great deal from D. Scott and am honored to have worked with him.

Now that our project is ‘in the can,’ we still have a lot of work to do. The post production process takes a total of 19 weeks. In this time we do everything from editing, to reshoots, to sound mixing, to ADR, to Color Correction, Visual Effects and DVD Mastering. This weekend the team is surely catching up on some well deserved rest, but expect to see more frequent updates from us now that principle photography is behind us.

Aside from our normal responsibilities, we continue to explore what culture our last weeks here as students in LA can provide. I enjoyed a week of endurance, watching first Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman… at LACMA and then being just destroyed by My Bloody Valentine’s 130+ dB assault at the El Rey a week later. 

Jeanne Dielman… documents, in 3 1/2 hours, 3 days of a single Belgian mother who moonlights as a prostitute. Most of the film takes place in her apartment (the men come to her place when her son is at school) and documents, silently, Ms. Dielman’s mechanical, perfected way of living that is sterile, boring, monotonous, and other adjectives we used to describe robots. After nearly 2 hours of efficient living—and we watch this woman wash dishes, boil potatoes, make coffee, clean tables, all in lengthy takes—something finally goes wrong: the potatoes burn. When Ms. Dielman is washing dishes and puts a dish on the drying rack still covered in suds, our theater gasped collectively. How could she?! It was like Michael sending Fredo out to the lake, except in extreme miniature. The film is fiction, and it does things with time we can never afford to do in 15 minutes—3+ minutes of kneading ground beef might not fly here. In capturing the peculiarities of life, though, Jeanne Dielman… is irrepressible.

My Bloody Valentine was one of the few bands allowed to break the 72-hour Coachella embargo against bands performing in Los Angeles on either end of the festival. After a 17-year hiatus, they returned last year to playing the soul-shaking shows they were apparently famous for in the first place. For their canonical album Loveless, frontman Kevin Shields engaged in all kinds of wacky behavior to get the sound just right—and for the most part, he did, with “swirling” guitars and “dreamy” melodies enveloping the listener in his still-well-constructed pop songs.

This effort seems moot in light of the band’s live show, though. Despite looking like polite pre-middle aged Britons on-stage, the band played at such an impossibly high level of controlled volume that earplugs are a necessity (and still don’t do the trick). Aside from the noise, the band fires a series of strobe lights directly at the audience, making connecting with them visually a physical impossibility if only because your eyes are constantly refreshing themselves. And the band didn’t even look like they were trying.

It was an antagonistic performance, to be sure, but I can’t shake it still. Their songs are too gorgeous, and the movements and changes in them were still audible in the fuzz of the room. They close with “You Made Me Realise,” a non-album track that escalates into 10+ minutes of pounding white noise.

Again, the sound levels were estimated at around 132-135 dB—similar to that of a 747 airplane taking off. And much like that roar is deafening but interesting in its violence, so was this quartet on stage like a 747 firing up indoors. Volume is surprisingly hard to control well, but when sustained (and its audience prepared) it’s as violent as a punch to the gut or a shaking of the shoulders. Will this be in our movie? Eh, hopefully.

It’s been too long since our last entry! Preproduction planning continues, and lots of decision are being made. Casting has begun this week- we’ll post updates about that too. Work work work.

So…keep checking back. We’re still around.

I am moving further from what I wish to say. Athletics are where we get underdogs, and it happens, on a large scale, in two realms: the Olympics and the NCAA basketball tournament. The Olympics are every two/four years, so forget that. March Madness, though, is a time to be inspired. Young, hardscrabble basketball players deemed unworthy by major programs fall to unwanted regional schools in peripheral conferences, where they have to win a pressure-filled conference tournament to earn a bid to the Big Dance. There, they are invariably put up against legendary programs stacked with NBA-caliber talent who are disappointed each year they receive a low seeding. Case-in-point: the blond-haired North Dakota State Bison taking on the defending champion Kansas in a first round game (the Jayhawks prevailed).

In short, the first round of the tournament has actual David vs. Goliath-stakes and they’re legitimate. The reality of dreams and dreamers and the often-superhuman efforts we are capable of come through, and I really believe this sort of nonsense only at this time of year. And, as usually happens, none of the dreams actually come true—this year’s tournament produced only one low-seeded team reaching the Sweet Sixteen, and that was Arizona, a perennial powerhouse having a “down year” after coaching turmoil.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for not posting, and I’m sticking by it. Missouri, my own underdog (though they’re still a big dog by most standards), had a strong showing but another heartbreaking loss in a lifetime of them. That’s my sob story for now, though.

Anyone concerned with the production of “Santa Ana Winds,” which is far more important than basketball, may be thrilled at the following updates:

–Our first big surge of fundraising has gone out and gone well, though we need more money. This sort of sentence is a pain to write as I imagine I will be writing it countless times over the next 60-80 years.

–The script is nearly finalized, and will soon be available to anyone who wants to read it. Just email our contact address and we can shoot you a copy if you’re interested in the specifics of what is going down.

Many other fun things are going on, but I’ll leave with this visual nugget: video of one of the wind machines from Roger George Rentals that we’re checking out for the film. There’s no sound but the images should be enough!

It’s easy to lose oneself in references and influences, and hopefully we look at things so stupidly different that whatever we get is wholly original.

The films listed above reflect several elements we’re dealing with: 16mm, crowd scenes, airports, comedy, handheld work, the importance of details, and the intersection of all these. One clip I regrettably forgot to show the team is one of my favorite moments from Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad, his controversial (!) humanist account of the 1964 Summer games. Turns out Ichikawa was more into the beauty and grace of all the athletes than the outcome of individual events; his producers (that would be the Japanese government) preferred a document of who won what and in what time.

Sports are a considerable hang-up of mine, as well as a timesuck of the highest order. Yet the drama of competition and of constant action (and the myriad ways to film such events) is addictive. And Santa Ana Winds is filled with challenges, games, and physical activity as our characters have to run to catch a flight. Check out this sublime moment of the eventual winner of the men’s marathon, Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila, with the crowd abstract behind him and the simple beauty of his focus demanding your attention.

Also, just ’cause it’s so great, here’s that New Order video. So much to say here, but I can’t ignore the reality of the band member’s performances, especially when they aren’t playing their instruments—somehow this says more about what it must be like to be in New Order than anything else. The steady hands, pensive looks, and idle stares are this pudding’s proof. It’s not all that different from what I love about the Shadows in Paradise clip posted here.

And, alright, fine: my favorite clip from This is Spinal Tap.

Check out the HD trailer for Adventureland, the upcoming feature from director Greg Mottola. It’s his follow-up to the 2007 hit Superbad. Shot entirely on Fuji.

View the trailer and see for yourself.