It’s official!
Today, I finished authoring a DVD and started gearing up for the release of The Climb. The newest short film from 17 West Productions. The drama is just under 14 minutes long and stars Michael Clarke and Alyssa LaPlume as two people struggling with life on the streets and the meaning of hope.
Check out the film’s trailer below and stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks!
I thought this was a fantastic and emotional short film.
Is he asking for Change, or is he asking for CHANGE? Follow a man as he affects multiple peoples’ lives with just one dollar, proving that it doesn’t take much to be the change in someone’s life.
This thought provoking short has nearly a million hits on YouTube and rising. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet.
For more from Sharon Wright head over to www.shesalwayswright.com.
First and foremost, I love to write movies. Having said that, I’m also a massive fan of blogging, writing short stories and creating accompanying images and logos in Photoshop. On a daily basis, I normally have a number of projects I can work on but lately, I’ve been focused on finishing my short film The Climb.
It’s a project we filmed in May of 2010 and I’ve been experimenting with different editing techniques ever since. However, the time has come to wrap up the short so I can reorganize and prioritize my projects in 2012.
XTRA | We have picture lock!
So for the last month, I’ve been completely wrapped up in post production with a couple afternoons of screenwriting here and there.
In all honesty, The Climb will most likely be finished in a few weeks and I’ve spent a lot more time figuring out what I want to create in 2012. It’s always beneficial to think ahead. Besides two big feature screenwriting projects and a slight 17west.ca redesign my schedule looks like it will be pretty open.
Finally, it looks like Ill be able to put a dent into my…
Anyone who enjoys being creative has a couple of these occupying the dusty storage shelves in their minds. These are projects you might get to someday. Unfortunately, many of these projects remain unfinished or worse they never really get off the shelf.
2012 will be the year of the screenplay for me as I don’t have plans to direct another film anytime soon. (Especially with a wedding less than a year away). Its going to be a year of words and two related back burner projects I’ve wanted to tackle for years.
The projects in question are eBooks. Since I began this blog in 2009, I’ve had a number of ideas for extra content to offer and these eBooks represent my first foray into the online self-publishing world.
But when you add up screenwriting, filmmaking, blogging and life in general, taking on an eBook simply didn’t fit into my daily routine. But that’s what a back burner project is! It’s a project you pick away at slowly. Something you work on and think about during quiet moments. I’ve already laid the groundwork and created over 40 pages of content for my first book. I’ve just never really given the project the time it deserves to graduate from back burner status.
Having said that, I’m extremely excited to wrap up a couple things and finally have time to write these projects. They will come in handy when I’m not working on my latest screenplay or blog post.
In my experience, back burner projects rarely get taken off the shelf and dusted off. The only one I can think of other than these eBooks was a children’s book I wrote for my parents years ago. It was something I always wanted to do but regularly put off. There was always something else that needed to be done. Finally, I got it finished and had a friend illustrate it. The memory I have of giving them copies of the book are precious to me now. I think about that memory fondly and I’m thankful that I took the time to write it for them.
Some back burner projects are meant to rise up. I won’t know if these two eBooks will fall into that category but I’ll never know until I finish them right?
Maybe its time you gave your back burner projects another look?
This is a guest post by Kyle Stevenson, a film student currently finishing his graduation film entitled ‘There are no Heroes’ Be sure to check out the IndieGoGo page and support the film!
There Are No Heroes is a 48-minute science fiction film being shot in Cape Town. It is has been adapted from a cyberpunk short story called Land Of The Blind by Charlie Human; that was based on Lauren Beukes’ cult novel Moxyland and subsequently published in her international award-winning novel Zoo City in 2010.
Set in future Cape Town several years after the meltdown of a nuclear power plant, the film follows Drew, a young single-mother and factory worker, who must fight to survive in this dystopian future ruled by a sinister pharmaceutical company, DARCORP. This cautionary tale takes a fresh look at many issues current in today’s world such as nuclear power plant development, privatization, corrupt healthcare systems and the political climate of South Africa.
It is the latest offering from post-graduate students at the Cape Town branch of the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance, or more commonly known as AFDA. The film school became world-renowned in 2006, when it won an Oscar at the 33rd Annual Student Academy Awards for its short film; Elalini and more recently had a nomination for a short film called Wamkelekile in 2009.
If there is one thing that my few years as a student filmmaker, and especially this film, has taught me is that I would not wish the film industry on my own worst enemy. You go days without sleep, you smoke two packs a day, are near suicidal on a good day, tempting fate on a bad day and generally become misanthropic as the days go by.
But when the dust settles and you are left alone in your own private quarters of midnight, you realize that you’ve been given the opportunity to change people’s lives, their perspectives, their emotions. You can make them cry, laugh, fall in love, sit on the edge of their seat or make them feel so disgusted they want to ban your film.
In South Africa I have been lucky enough to been born in the least nationalist time in my country’s history – don’t be fooled by Invictus. Where everyone is constantly asking hard questions of the government and only wondering now where it all went wrong.
This sense of disbelief and helplessness is what I wanted to explore in the future South Africa premise of the film. Cyber-punk allows you to explore the man going up against the machine. The genre also allows the question of what if the hero doesn’t win? What if the guy doesn’t get the girl? What if the aliens win in the end? How do the characters feel? How do they react? How does the audience feel?
These questions make the movie unpredictable and exciting, which I think young film-making is the perfect platform for; because we don’t have the pressures of making back a Michael Bay budget at the box office. This freedom does come at a price, the price of not having a Michael Bay budget.
As passionate filmmakers we were given the opportunity to extend the film from 24 minutes to 48 minutes and decided that the story would be better told in this format. Unfortunately even with all the great sponsorship there just isn’t enough budget left to complete the extended film.
So the film needs an extra $2590 (R20 000) to be completed and so we’ve have decided to use the pioneering crowd-funding website IndieGoGo to raise the additional funds, where the audience contributes to a film they want made. There Are No Heroes is yet to raise the full amount and is still looking for the audience members willing to invest from as little as $14 (R100).
Click here to check out ‘There Are No Heroes’ on IndieGoGo.
Once completed There Are No Heroes is set to screen at the Annual AFDA Film Festival at Cinema Nouveau in Cavendish Square (Cape Town) and Rosebank Mall (Johannesburg) in late November this year, after which it will be sent to several local and international film festivals.
For more information visit our page on Facebook.
I showed some footage of my short film, The Climb to my producing partner Eric the other day. The plan was simple. I was going to show him the new sequences I just locked and then go over the entire film scene by scene. What I failed to mention to him was a fairly major change I’ve been thinking about.
Cutting one of the opening scenes completely…
It was interesting to watch that 2 minute scene play out. Could I lose it entirely? Will the film be better or worse?
When the footage was over, Eric made a suggestion. He wondered what it would be like if we lost the exact scene I was thinking about cutting. (We work well together for a reason.) We discussed the changes in depth. The issue at hand is whether or not I can get rid of a scene that I love and whether the story will survive without it. Every director must face these decisions but it’s tougher when you’re the editor as well.
It’s a tug of war I’ve been dealing with ever since. Truthfully, I haven’t even taken the scene out yet. I made the excuse to leave it in until the whole film is locked. Then I’ll step back and evaluate the film’s pacing and whether or not I’ve told a good story.
Letting go of a scene is hard. There are always moments in a film you can’t bare to lose but I think you HAVE to make those tough decisions. In the end, it’s all about crafting something you can be proud of but also a film that will entertain other people as well. I’ve definitely taken my time editing this film but I’m in no hurry. The Climb is an exercise. How many different ways can I cut a scene? What if I lost this line of dialogue? Would this moment work better earlier in the film? Can I cut out this scene entirely?
In a way, editing The Climb has made me a better screenwriter. It’s interesting to see the impact one passion in my life has on another.
At the end of the day, I don’t think I see this particular scene making the final cut. No matter how much I enjoy it. A short film is meant to get in, tell you a story and get out. The scene I want to lose delays that right now. It slows down the beginning of the film. So, for now, I have 4 options.
I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do but the process is inspiring. The Climb has been a wonderful opportunity to grow as an editor and a filmmaker. That’s exactly the kind of project I wanted it to be.
