DAILY SHORT

URGENT

Stephen Scott Day needs your help. You'll remember him as the filmmaker who inspired this blog and whose film Undying Love I featured as the very first post. He also made the fantastic ONETRUEFRIEND.

Now he needs your help.

He's putting together a new short film, called Summer, Summer, Summer.

Here's the premise:

Summer, Summer, Summer is a short film about cheaters, the cheated and cheatees. After a man hears his girlfriend fooling around with another man, he willingly spirals into a destructive path of pleasure, becoming the very thing that destroyed his relationship to begin with. By the films end he will have finally defined what it is to be a sincere partner, without the experience of a relationship to guide him.

That sounds fantastic.

We already have most of our equipment, so here’s what you'll be funding:

Catering for cast and crew. Not a single person on this project is getting paid, they're taking part because they are passionate about their work. So at the very least, they need to be fed.

Underwater housing for pool scenes

Props

Reasonable!

Chump Change

Wait For You

Director: Nimrod Shapira

Writer's Block

Winning Liberty: Episode 1

Director: Robert Bauer

Wow, I didn't expect to sit through that whole thing. Here's a video that earned its "long" tag.

Factory

Director: Jeremy Fisher

So here's a submission. Mr. Fisher submitted it. I hit "publish" by accident and now I don't want to take it back.

how are you?

Director: Cyril Oberholzer

Look at the pileup. Dag.

Back to the slog.

Blinky

Director: Ruairi Robinson

My friend Corey says:

Brothers of the Bike

The Best Thing I Ever Done

Not counting the two videos that have been removed since being posted here, there are a staggering six hours and eleven minutes of video here so far.

Ridiculous.

ONETRUEFRIEND

Director: Stephen Scott Day

What a weird little film this is. Right from the skewiff opening shot1 through its bizarrely quiet, legitimately suspenseful middle, to its unpleasant little ending.

The reason I keep posting Stephen Scott Day's shorts here is because I think they really embody the ethos I'm trying to codify as the new indie filmmaking. It's digital, it's a little grubby, and it's online. These shorts often fall short2 when they try too hard to looks like the stuff we see at the cinemaplex instead of embracing their limitations and taking the opportunity to play around. And I think Day gets that.

I don't really love the premise of the movie, but I do really enjoy the execution, the methodical way the trio of kidnappers do their job, quietly and efficiently. The leader of the group is just great. She's seriously badass. The tone throughout is tense and off-kilter.

The question becomes, then, how do these filmmakers make the transition to the big screen? I'd love for this guy to make a feature film, but I'd want him to have more resources at his disposal than he did here. But I'm glad he didn't have more resources for this. It's the obnoxious thirteen year old punk in me who loves early Against Me! for its raggedness, and it's the level headed grown-up who appreciates their later slicker stuff. For me, it all comes back to Against Me!

I've been dying to use the word "skewiff" for weeks, since reading it in a review for Dogtooth. Which, if you haven't seen, go see it asap or we can't be friends. It's on netflix instant. No guarantees that I used it right. ↩︎

GETTING LAID TONIGHT

Director: Kyle Gilman

K

Director: Nate Murguelan

Here's a weird thought: I almost didn't post this because it looks too good. They sunk some money into this, and it kind of looks like it was paid for by Snapple and Apple and big Milk.