Short Film Competition

4 comments (closed), posted on april 19, 2005, tags: filmmaking

You can now find our film, The Egregious Meatball, in the Amazon.com Short Film Competition. Because the films are randomly presented, we cannot direct you straight to our film. You must watch each film entirely to rate it, then you will be presented with another random short. Amazon has finally included a skip button which might allow you to happen upon our film faster, but if you have the time you should watch and rate some of the other films in the contest. Then, when you finally see our movie, be generous with your stars.

As soon as we are allowed, we will put the film online for all audiences to see directly (around May 20), but for now, we hope you come across it in the competition.

Very Important Message

22 comments (closed), posted on april 14, 2005, tags: filmmaking

Don't ever. EVER. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, everevereverevereverever, ever! EVER EVER EVER, ever... ever... EVEREVEREVEREVER, ever. EVER trust Macromedia or ColdFusion to handle something important. EVER. I can't make that clear enough. If you have an important web application, never trust your business to ColdFusion. It's a mistake. I promise you.

Last night, at about 9PM, the Amazon.com Short Film Competition registration site which is handled and hosted by Macromedia crashed. It was down for over 5 hours. Every time it came back up, it crashed. This is the quality that is ColdFusion. Consider this proof of concept: Macromedia has proven that ColdFusion is ineffective at handling large server loads and spikes.

We managed to get a "successful upload" message at around 1:30AM. Who knows if the film actually got entered. I'm waiting for a call back from the TriBeCa Film Festival about the matter. What a horribly anticlimactic end to such a great 4 weeks of working on this film.

But no matter. The film turned out really well and we're excited to see it online in the near future. We'll also be creating a special DVD and hopefully entering it into some festivals. More coming soon.

Damn you Macromedia. I want those 5 hours back.

Update: Our film made it into the competition and is now available for viewing. Read more about it.

Update Two: Shawn has posted about the horrible experience this contest has been thanks to Amazon and Macromedia: Amazon Is Off To a Shaky Start.

Best. Quote. Ever.

1 comment (closed), posted on april 8, 2005, tags: filmmaking

Oh, right, I have a website. My fault. Hi!

You've made me hate laughter. —Katia

She actually said that tonight. We have this dynamic where I make her laugh for 10 or 15 minutes at a time until I've pushed the joke really far and—even though she's still laughing—she gets mad. Then I usually switch into ridiculous voices and do a one-man play for another 3 minutes until she's slapping my arms and really mad. But still laughing.

I don't know if you know this about me, but when people are laughing, I don't stop. Therefore. Hitherto. Et cetera.

Shawn and I have been working on a film for the TriBeCa Film Festival Short Film Competition. It's due this coming Wednesday. We've been working our asses off for weeks. We're getting close. More details soon.

So that's where I am. And my arms hurt.