#48 hour film challenge

[jadethest0ne]

Here's a section I did for the animated short "Little Princess Daisy" for the Cardiff QuickDraw 48 hour animation challenge. I worked alongside a bunch of other awesome artists and animators. I had lots of fun! Go check out the full short film here:

And finally, here's some concept sketches I did while we were all in our planning phases. I really wanted Daisy to interact with some small critters haha! (apologies for the shitty phone quality)

[nrtomf]

(via https://youtube.com/watch?v=xaVlJvJQICE&feature=share)

Hello all, this is "Running to Memories." A short film we did a few years back. It was made under the theme of the 48 hours challenge (without the editing). Check it out Please subscribe for more one-minute films to come

[daveinediting]

After finishing this year's edit for the 48 Hour Film Project, I was on the phone with my dad, sharing with him my weekend. At at one point he asked, basically, what do we get for doing this?

As in whaddaya get for winning?

As in, why do this?

And while there are obvious answers like Cannes and networking and demo reel, none of these are actually my answer. My answer being…

How could I not?

Why would I let the opportunity whip passed me?

I'm an editor, for crying out loud. I edit professionally and off the clock.

Now...

Add to that the opportunity of working on something outside my daily professional experience. In this case, narrative fiction. Especially since this year when our team drew mockumentary for its genre.

Add to that the time frame: 48 hours. My actual involvement begins as soon as I get the script either very late Friday night or early Saturday morning. The actual editing I do starts around noon, Saturday, as soon as I get the morning's footage, until as late as, maybe, five Sunday afternoon.

This year it was three.

So Saturday, yesterday, I was cutting from noon until 230-ish A.M. at which point I delivered the first cut online. Then Sunday from 9 to 3 with the producer and director overseeing changes from noon on.

I suppose I groove on the immediacy of that kind of compressed production timeline. 😁

Which brings me to the core of this challenge: you don't know the genre with which you're spending your weekend or the required elements you have to incorporate... until Friday at 7PM when genres are randomly drawn from a pool of thirty including action/adventure, comedy, crime/gangster, dark comedy, drama, fantasy, film de femme, fish out of water, horror, mockumentary, romance, sci-fi, silent film, superhero, thriller/suspense, buddy film, climate film, coming of age, doppleganger/mistaken identity, family film, heist, legal film, musical, mystery, period piece, revenge, road movie, tearjerker, time travel movie, and, finally, vacation/holiday film.

There's definitely a lot in there that would be fun to do.

There's definitely a lot in there we could nail.

But.

There's also a lot in there that could be a stone cold drag.

Just as there's a lot in there at which we could potentially fail.

And yet.

Whichever genre we draw is what we're doing.

No excuses.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I dig that.

Which brings me to perhaps my favorite reason for hitching my ride to this challenge: the people I get to work with. The fellow professionals with whom I get to collaborate.

Because no matter the genre, I'm confident we have the expertise and extended networks to handle whatever genre's thrown at us. I'm confident we'll float and swim and even fly… no matter how far into the deep end of the pool we're thrown.

Maybe that's hubris, I don't know. Maybe it's rose colored wishful thinking. Most of all, it's a judgement about the people on the team from extras, grips, and production assistants... to composers, costumers, directors of photography, and sound professionals... to writers, actors, directors and producers,  

Which brings me to maybe the most basic thing for whichever career speaks to you.

More than the job itself, the people for whom you work and with whom you work make all the difference to how you experience your career. Not only now. But across years. Across decades. 

They're the ones who help perpetuate a creative fire as they share it, their expertise, their commitment to craft, their humor, creativity, perseverance, wisdom and professionalism... on every passing and challenging new project.

And the 48 Hour Film Project is a reminder to me (among a number of other such reminders) of how important it is to find the right people, your people, in the course of your professional pursuit.

Of course, if they happen to find you first, why...

That's okay, too.

😁

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Furiosa thoughts

About 48 hours after watching, I think my take on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is coalescing into: I enjoyed it as a Mad Max movie but found it disappointing as a Fury Road prequel.

Any Mad Max movie made after Fury Road was always going to suffer the fate of being compared to Fury Road, which is the best action movie ever made. So like, compared to any other action movie you can think of, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (we'll call it FMMS going forward) is very very good! It just isn't Fury Road.

The rest is under the cut for spoilers:

The action sequences were compelling. (I was aware I was hunched forward in my seat in tension/anticipation almost the entire time.) Some of them were even brilliant. That long sequence where the Octoboss and the Mortiflyers (yes those are their names) are attacking the War Rig with all kinds of airborne contraptions? Phenomenal. I was like yes okay now we are in a Mad Max movie! Other than that one sequence, though, in which we see Furiosa and Praetorian Jack begin to trust each other, I thought they rarely achieved the kind of wordless advancement of character relationships through action beats that is the lifeblood of Fury Road. So the action was good, but it was just normal-good, not Fury Road transcendent.

I did miss John Seale's cinematography. While I thought the action choreography was great, the shot selection was just not as dynamic and interesting as in Fury Road. I also really did not vibe with so much of the musical themes being recycled from Fury Road. The Fury Road score is SO memorable and the music is such an integral part of the momentum and feeling of every scene in the movie; I can play that score and see every beat of the action unfolding in my brain now. I wanted new score that felt like it was a part of this new action that we were seeing.

I loved all the new worldbuilding details and finally getting to see inside Gastown and the Bullet Farm. Those locations and their unique features were utilized really well for the action that took place in them. Loved the new details we got about the Citadel. The grappling hooks just dipping down to yoink people's vehicles during battle? Fantastic. The hidden Citadel ledge with the little pool of water?? That was such a fanfic-ready location. Pretty sure I already wrote at least one fic set there back in like 2016.

The Green Place! Very different from what I imagined but so much worldbuilding in just a few shots.

In general I thought the new cast rose to the challenge. Alyla Browne who played little kid Furiosa I thought was phenomenal actually. That's a tough role, both emotionally and physically, for a child actor and she slayed it. Casting Indigenous model and actress Charlee Fraser to play Furiosa's mother certainly made the Stolen Generation parallels more obvious. I'll have a lot more to say about Dementus down below, but Chris Hemsworth brought a great combo of bonkers and menacing.

I never doubted that Anya Taylor-Joy could bring the emotional intensity needed to the role--she can do crazy eyes like nobody's business, and with the growl she put in her voice she really did sound like Charlize Theron a bit. I found her physicality convincing for a young Furiosa. But she is not Charlize, through no fault of her own. Charlize is tall and she has broad shoulders and she just takes up so much space when moving and fighting as Furiosa and I think it was always going to be hard to replicate that. As long as they didn't try too hard to bridge the gap between the characters I was fine with it. But that one scene at the end where she's bringing the Wives to the Rig I was very viscerally like that is NOT our Furiosa. (I almost wish they would've used Charlize's stunt double for that scene the way they popped Jacob Tomuri into Max's place.) They could have simply left a time gap--based on the "15 years" she says to Dementus and the 7,000+ days we hear about in Fury Road there should be at least a 4-year gap between the film timelines, although in terms of bridging the look of the two actors it feels like it should be more like 10 years.

If FMMS had been a self-contained movie about a character named Furiosa in the Mad Max universe, I think I would have found it very satisfying. But as a prequel to Fury Road there were a bunch of ways I thought it was lacking on a story level.

I think it's pretty clear that this is not the backstory, or at least not the complete backstory, that Charlize Theron was imagining while playing Furiosa. Which...there's nothing objectively wrong with that; word of God and what actors think about their characters doesn't supersede what's on film for determining what is canon. However, Fury Road positions Joe as Furiosa's main antagonist, and while we don't get the full story behind the incandescent rage she directs at him, we know that rage is there and is a big part of her motivation. In interviews at the time, Charlize talked about the idea that Furiosa had been stolen to be a Wife but then was discovered to be infertile and discarded, how she survived by hiding in the Citadel and eventually rose to a position of power, how she saw her actions not as saving the Wives but as stealing them, and that her motivation at least starts out as more about hurting Joe than helping these women.

We get only the tiniest suggestion of Furiosa's backstory in Fury Road ("I was taken as a child, stolen") and the rest we piece together by implication. She is a healthy full-life woman working for a man who keeps healthy full-life women as sex slaves, hoping one of them will produce a viable male heir for him. She is effectively a general in his army, projecting his power on the wasteland, a position no other woman seems to occupy. She tells Max she is seeking "redemption." Redemption for what? She doesn't say. But "whatever she has done to win a position of power within this misogynist death cult" seems like a pretty obvious answer.

And that's interesting! That's an interesting backstory that engages with some of the core themes and moral questions of the Mad Max universe. These movies deal a lot with the tension between self-preservation and human connection. Do you screw someone else over to protect yourself? Even if it means putting them in the terrible position that you yourself have clawed your way out of? Even if it means enforcing your own oppressor's power over them? Or do you take the risk of helping people and caring enough to connect with them, even though this carries an emotional and physical risk?

FMMS doesn't really engage with Furiosa's relationship to Joe like, at all. It's not like Joe comes off looking like a good guy. He's just hardly in the movie. I don't know if this would have been different if Hugh Keays-Byrne were still alive. I don't know if there was pressure from the studio to cast an A-list male lead actor alongside Anya Taylor-Joy (who's a hot commodity now but wasn't what I would call an A-lister when she was originally cast). I don't know if, once Chris Hemsworth was cast, that affected how central his character's role became, since he is certainly the biggest name attached to the film. I would have actually been fine with Chris Hemsworth or another actor of his ilk playing a younger Joe, and us getting to see some of the charisma that attracted followers to him.

But the end result is that we have Dementus, who is a perfectly fine Mad Max villain, and quite entertaining at times! But not the most compelling antagonist you could give Furiosa.

The four Mad Max movies that feature Max go through an interesting evolution. In the first two movies, the villains are people "outside" society--criminals and roving gangs--and the people Max is defending are "civilization." So we have Mad Max where Max is a very fucked-up cop, and Road Warrior where Max is the prototypical western gunslinger, riding in to town to protect the settlement from an outside threat, but ultimately unable to accept any of the comforts of civilization for himself.

Then in Thunderdome and Fury Road, the dynamic switches. Now the antagonists are warlords and dictators. They are civilization. And the people Max ends up helping are trying to escape them.

To me, Dementus feels much more like the earlier kind of Mad Max villain. If there's another Mad Max movie I can most compare FMMS to, it's the first one. Dementus is Furiosa's Toecutter. (Kills her family, gives her her signature disabling injury, movie ends with her seeking revenge on him but it doesn't feel heroic or triumphant.) The whole end of FMMS when Furiosa is implacably hunting down Dementus? Extremely Mad Max 1.

But violent revenge holds a different symbolic place in Furiosa's story than it does in Max's. The end of Mad Max is a tragedy because Max tells us it is. He explicitly states, early in the movie, that he needs to stop being a cop or he'll become no different than the violent criminals he's pursuing. So he leaves his job and goes on an extended weird vacation with his wife and child, trying to get away from the violence of a collapsing society. But that violence finds him anyway, and by the end of the movie, Max has become the exact thing he said he didn't want to be. It's a tragedy not because the people Max kills in revenge for killing his family don't deserve it, but because seeking violent sadistic revenge is damaging to Max. That is not what he needs in order to heal from the loss of his wife and child. What he needs is to take the risk of human connection again. This is what he starts groping toward in the following two movies and fully realizes in Fury Road.

But Furiosa doesn't have the same arc. Her story in Fury Road is about how a few people struggling against their oppressor can be the catalyst that brings down a whole regime. Furiosa getting to rip Joe's face off is fucking satisfying, and it's supposed to be! So it's a bit weird, then, to spend an entire movie giving her a backstory that not only is not about Joe at all, but implies that seeking and getting revenge against Dementus for killing her mother and Jack is what made her into the person we see in Fury Road.

Aside from questions of revenge, what I thought Furiosa's goal was going to be is set up in the beginning of the movie. "No matter what happens, find your way home." Very clear objective there. And then we see her try to get home like, 1.5 times. I thought we were well set up to follow the tried and true film story format of "simple goal, big obstacles, high stakes." I wanted to see her trying over and over again to get home, and being thwarted in different ways every time. I wanted to see grief and guilt over her mother's death turn her mother's last command into a mission for which she would sacrifice anything (and anyone) else. I wanted to see her justify working for Joe and accumulating power in the violent world of the Citadel as what she has to do in order to get home. I wanted to see "Have you done this before?" "Many times." But we didn't really get that either.

Ultimately, I think the least frustrating way to think about the film--which the film itself encourages--is as one of many possible Wasteland legends about a character called Furiosa. Maybe it happened this way. Maybe it didn't. Maybe this is the Furiosa we see in Fury Road. Maybe it isn't. It all depends on how much you believe of the History Man's tales.

[ititledit]

YouTube swaps for @radblrthemeweeks

I watch YouTube when I want to have some downtime... And I like my YouTube to be fun.

I thought I would share some female YouTubers I've been enjoying recently, I'd love to hear other people's recommendations!

If you like Nick DiRamio or Mike's Mic, TV and film review/comedy videos try -

Jamie French

She reviews bad and nostalgic films, including skits where she green screens herself into scenes from the films. She points out production errors, lazy tropes and is pretty fun. The series started out being "movies and make up" but the make up is easy to ignore and as she's done more movie review videos she seems to be doing the on-screen make up less and less.

Recommended videos -

Sleepover is a dumpster fire

I think I found the worst dance movie of all time

Kierra loves TV

Kierra summarises and discusses characters and tropes in her favourite TV shows. Her channel is pretty new, only 7 months old, and while i don't watch her videos on family guy, in her other videos she has a great voice and interesting perspectives on early 2000s TV - I enjoy her videos on Gilmore girls and Sex and the City

Recommended videos

Why everybody hates Carrie Bradshaw

The manipulation of Emily Gilmore

If you like Todd in the Shadows or other deep dives into musicians, one hit wonders, artists who didn't make it, try -

Naomi Cannibal

Naomi talks about a range of topics including celebrity culture and TV shows, but I particularly enjoy her videos about musicians careers and history.

Recommended videos -

One album wonders : label conflicts and the rise of streaming

Teairra Mari - the girl who was almost Rihanna

If you like Stuart Hicks or Architecture related videos try -

Belinda Carr

Belinda makes videos about architecture and modern building techniques and trends. I find her videos to be very informative, even if you're not that into architecture I recommend giving her a try!Recommended videos -

Bamboo Vs cork flooring - everything you need to know

How to build straw bale houses - pros and cons

If you like day in the life, spending challenges and solo travel try -

Clickfortaz

I love Taz's videos, she is silly, very honest and quite naïve. Her friendship with her childhood friend Moon is really lovely, but most of her videos are just Taz trying new things. She has talked a lot about her mental health and has published and performed her poetry.

Recommended videos -

I tried to bake a cake with no recipe

Living in a treehouse for 48 hours

If you like furniture restoration or carpentry like Blacktail Studio try

Transcend Furniture Gallery

Angie repairs, restores and up cycles furniture. The videos are informative but also very calm and satisfying and I really like her work!

Restoring table tops - stripping, sanding, staining, sealing

Do you like videos of model and miniature making like Thalasso Hobbyer? Try -

KaypeaCreations

Karen makes a lot of animals, mythical and real, and her methods and techniques are really interesting to watch.

Recommended videos -

I made a realistic mooshroom from Minecraft

[credulouskhaleesi]

I've been daydreaming a fun but complex $mütty, smut, smut scenario in my head about Tom Glynn-Carney, Matt Smith, Ewan Mitchell, Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Archie Madekwe, Pedro Pascal, Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn, Jamie Campbell Bower, Joe Keery, Rory Culkin, Kieran Culkin, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Will Poulter, & Jeremy Allen White. I'll most definitely narrow it down to 3 or 5 of them per popularity and personal thirst/bias because I feel an odd number would be super spicy & dangerous.

Where reader is rich AF, smart, beautiful woman who just barely got into acting as a hobby & is in a show with the aforementioned hotties and they've just finished filming for the day, had dinner at a 4 star Michelin (hello Ebon, Jeremy, & Will baby! ((In no particular order))Yes Chef daddy...I mean chef..I mean daddy...daddy? DADDY 🫡👨‍🍳💦) and are all hammered when they've been told by production that the hotel rooms reserved for all (but reader) fell through.

Well lucky for them, ol' humble ass reader with her 32 room mansion (all rooms have en suite bathrooms, huge jacuzzi tubs *heh heh* and full-on kitchenettes) invites them all to stay at her place for the duration of filming since she lives so close and chaos and LOTS of pining, romance, and a SHIT TON of the smuttiest and nastiest (cause reader gets down like that and is a D/S switcheroni) sex ensues.

THE ONLY PROBLEM IS... not only do I anticipate that absolutely NO ONE, NILCH, NEMO, NADIE, NIEMAND, NESSUNO, لا احد will even come across, read, or gaf about this post....buttt I also have high expectations of that not a single soul would either be interested or read this fic that I highly anticipate will cost me my blood, sweat, tears, and first born...ya know, nbd.

However if I can get some traction and action on this post (to the tune of 20ish likes and 25% of the likes turned into comments (( 5ish comments to those mathematically challenged, tired, and deranged like I )) )within the next 48 hours (reblog, reblog, reblog my creatures!!!)then I will immediately throw a poll when the time is up to see who my the most fave few of my the above baby daddies have prevailed and made it into my coochie heaven.

In all seriousness, when it comes to me being biased about some of the men I'm trying sooo fucking hard to stop objectifying, I truly do want to get the most popular thrown into this mess however, I know more about some of these men than I do about anyone who is not listed. (Yes this a warning ⚠️ that this will be a RPF, so if that's not your thang, I apologize, but you have been warned) but I will absolutely do my research and take in ANY input given to me by my Champion.

I must say that Elspeth Catton (per Saltburn fame) had it wrong when she said men were dry, and it is my duty to prove her wrong because damn my skull is a hamster wheel and my mind is the hamster..?

Um anyways...those who reblog & interact the most with this post, will have their fave put in automatically because it's hard out in these Tumblr streets and I'd like to share my sexually drustrated (deprived & frustrated had nasty sex to create this creative word that has now become a part of my vernacular and the lovely locution I can't wait to share with my Fumblrs (Tumblr & Friends' bastard child) creative daydreams with as many people who have made it through this bible/, Novella (what a fucking lie, this is a full on Novel & y'all are so incredibly awesome if you have read this far at all!) of mine.

Additionally, I could only be so lucky for you all to spread your legs the word that I'm trying my hand at some filthy, sexy, envy-filled (among other things that will be filled) smut so it can be enjoyed by more because I myself have noticed a lack of RPF about a good handful of the men listed.

Anyways, I must thank you with every Fibre of my being for coming to my TED talk. No really, if you made it THIS far, I'm so grateful to you. I might extend my time limit to 72 hours to receive an overall verdict on whether I should move forward or not, but as far as time goes and how much I wish to put into this, I'd like to start ASAP.

I'd also like to assure you that the grammar, text-speak, and abbreviations will not be as disgustingly available as it was in this post (unless warranted. Hello sexting and texting), and I am very back and forth on whether I want this to be a love triangle or pentagon and honestly could go higher depending on who is chosen by my Champion. I also want to assure the future real MVP/G.O.A.T that whomever you choose will indeed have a lot of research and your input put into who they are for somewhat accuracy's sake.

In conclusion (I promise im really done this time), I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday and have a wonderful New Year!

EDIT: I have decided to include a poll with this post to help my fellow lurkers who aren't keen on commenting.

TLDR; I am wanting to create a smut fic including the above listed men and rich!reader who has taken up acting as a hobby. Production messed up the arrangement of their hotel for the duration of filming, and she invites everyone to stay at her insanely impressive mansion. Thus ensues a smutty love triangle, pentagon, nonagon, or whatever, and I'm just trying to see who is interested in reading something like this. I'm giving 48 hours (maybe a smidge more) time to determine if this is something anyone would be interested in, and this is what the poll is for. Those who reblog, comment, and interact the most will have their fave chosen (even if he, she, or they...[because I'm definitely pan and would love to add a girl, nonbin, or genderqueer actor in as well]..isn't listed). I also want to warn ⚠️ that this is an 18+ 🔞 RPG and assure you that grammar, research, and realism will be included.

[no-where-new-hero]

✣ Blake Wrapped: KDrama Edition 📹

Almost exactly a year ago, I watched Goblin for the first time and loved it, as I knew I would (I am so very much the target audience for that show it’s not even funny). And when I started retagging the gifs and stuff I had reposted from that time, I saw that I tagged something with “I’m not in a kdrama phase per se, but…” Reader, I lied. The kdrama phase was just waiting dormant for its moment to overtake my life. Here’s my rough ranking of what I saw this year.

#1: Coffee Prince (2007)

It’s a little dated, but it also has worn tremendously well considering its contemporaries, and the bones are flawless: great writing with well-rounded characters, a gorgeously evocative soundtrack, a lovable cast. It has recognizable tropes (rich boy/poor girl, second leads, deceptions, etc) but never feels cliche. Also, it’s incredibly queer. Yes, the endgame of the main pair is happily heterosexual but the male lead works through a gay awakening and the female lead is basically non-binary. Even the second couple challenge gender roles in a refreshing way. I’ve only seen it twice because of platform difficulties, but it has compelling rewatch value.

#1’ : Goblin/Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (2016)

This show is a masterpiece. It has its weak moments here and there (one dreepy song in the OST, the female leads could be fleshed out more, some of the mythology is spit and string), but it’s such a stunning production in the whole that you don’t really get stuck on that. The cinematography is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen in any piece of film ever, the instrumental music is unmatched, it engages with deep themes, and the interpersonal dynamics are gorgeous (I love the three-of-us-in-this-marriage feel among the mains). It’s also incredibly moving, especially in parts that you don’t expect. I’ve seen this five times and I’m still not bored of it.

#1.5: Tale of the Nine Tailed (2020)

Considering how much I’ve yelled about this, you’d think it would be higher, and I think my overall complaint about it is that, on a craft level, it’s telling two stories: the overt story is an immortal romance, but the underneath story is about family and redemption, and that’s the story that’s the compelling one. Unfortunately, unlike the first two I listed, the theme and plot don’t always cohere as well as they could. That being said, the characters are top-notch, the cinematography and effects are great, and the atmosphere always feels just a little bit off to be properly otherworldly. It gave me my OTP and set off an obsession. I need to rewatch it and suffer all over again.

#2: Hidden Identity (2015)

Of course, this drama is flawed, as viewers always seem to like pointing out, but I also did watch all sixteen episodes in less than 48 hours during a school week, which tells you something about its gripping pacing and structure. The episodes are, well, episodic, but the cliffhangers are fantastic, the various threads build well to the final boss, and It was also just a really well-produced show? The cinematography and fight choreography were masterfully executed, the cast really made the most of their roles, and the theme music was addictive. I was also, of course, watching it for the Plot (Kim Beom).

#2.5: Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938 (2023)

It’s hard for me to evaluate this objectively because so much of it was fan-service, but since I was the fan being serviced, how could I not like it? It lacked the chic sexiness of the first season, but it was full of sincerity and incredible characters making heart-breaking and meaningful connections with each other—the writing improved, thank goodness—and the mix of fantasy, historical drama, and western made for a really fun setting. I enjoyed the shortened structure of having only 12 episodes instead of the standard 16 since it seemed to hold the pacing to a tighter rhythm.

#3: Special Labor Inspector Mr. Jo (2019)

Would I rewatch this? Probably not. Did I enjoy the heck out of it the first time? Absolutely. It’s a sharp, smart satire whose virtue lies in its breezy ability to entertain as a tall tale while keeping the themes and social commentary incredibly grounded. It’s amazing how a show with such cynicism could also be such fun. The cast was excellent and the plot deliberately uses familiar tropes of rich families, hired gangs, and love struggles to push through its message: Power destroys. Heroism is kindness. Sometimes all you need is one very angry and very tired gym teacher turned bureaucrat to make life better.

#4: Boys Over Flowers (2008)

This should not be as high as it is, but there were moments I still haven’t stopped thinking about and want to see again, which means it must have had something going on, even though I’m not sure what it was. I could never tell whether it was being ridiculous and outlandish on purpose or the show runners really thought they were making serious television. Exactly two songs in the soundtrack were good, and you also had that theme song as proper paratextual warning, and the outfits were what conservative people probably thing Queer Eye is. I do see why people like it. It’s just the kind of liking you have to do while mildly intoxicated.

#5: That Winter, the Wind Blows (2013)

This one was melodramatic to the hilt, but somehow weirdly compelling, both through the elaborate ruse that sets up the plot and through the outrageous beauty of the two leads. This is the kind of overdramatic and indulgent nonsense you sometimes want in fiction, especially when its gorgeous to look at. The male lead goes around in suspenders and nice pants looking like a 1930s gangster. His sidekick’s hair and outfit anticipates David Tennant’s Crowley by six years. The female lead’s disability was pretty sensitively portrayed. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.

Bonus (movies): You all know my thoughts about Flight. Also going to mention Hellcats, which was absurd but also deserves full points for having a main character come out as gay for her best friend).

[louisupdates]

MUSIC-NEWS

10 May 2023

We're excited to announce that Louis Tomlinson’s feature-length documentary film All Of Those Voices will be making its global streaming premiere on Saturday, May 13, 2023.

The exclusive screening event featuring a new exclusive cut of the film with never-before-seen footage and pre-show red carpet event will kick off at 6:00 p.m. PT with live red carpet coverage from LA’s historic Ford Amphitheater in the heart of Hollywood, capturing all the action, followed by a live in-depth interview with Louis and Director Charlie Lightening. Fans who purchase a ticket to the stream in advance will have the chance to submit their question for Louis, with selected questions being answered live on air. Tickets for the stream can be purchased at for $17.99.

All Of Those Voices enjoyed a highly successful run in global theaters during its limited release in March 2023, reaching over 60 countries and with over 500,000 fans heading to cinemas. This stream marks the first time the movie will be available to a global audience and the first instance of a live red carpet and Q+A streaming event open for Tomlinson’s fans to connect with the artist and experience the excitement and energy that comes with a premiere of this size. The show will also be available for rewatches for 48 hours following the premiere event on the 13th.

All Of Those Voices’ global streaming premiere will also mark Louis’ third time partnering with Veeps. In 2021, Louis was listed in the Guinness Book Of World Records for breaking the record for the most live-streamed concert by a solo male artist. Louis hosted one of the biggest live-stream concert events ever held, selling over 160,000 tickets to fans in over 110 countries, raising funds for several important charities, and touring crew affected by the pandemic.

All Of Those Voices explores Louis’ journey from a One Direction member to a solo artist, capturing the challenges and triumphs that defined his path. It's a story about the power of self-discovery and the courage it takes to be true to oneself.

[popentertainment-interviews]

Gareth Edwards

Dynamic Sci-Fi Director Envisions an Artificial Intelligence-infused World Decades From Now in His Latest Film The Creator

by Brad Balfour

Employing actors with global reputations and locations all over the world, master sci-fi film director Gareth James Edwards has now put out The Creator. The film considers the effects of the Artificial Intelligence revolution in technology some 40 years from now. It stands the Terminator premise on its head and drives a whole re-think on the supposed “menace” of AI.

As if it’s a metaphor for the Vietnam war as much as anything else, future America and its allies are in a conflict between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence which have taken root in many Southeast and Far-East Asian countries. While AI-enhanced androids have merged with the general human population there, the USA has prohibited them and is committed to destroying Asia and its robotic allies.

Entering the mix is Joshua (John David Washington), a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife Maya (Gemma Chan), one of the leaders of the Asian-AI community and resistance. After having been undercover among the AI community — where he met and wed Maya, Joshua had reluctantly been removed from the area. He had then been recruited to return and hunt down the Creator, the elusive advanced AI designer/programmer who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war and destroy Nomad, the American super weapon — a computer-enhanced airborne battleship. Ironically, it depends on sophisticated computer technology to fight its anti-AI war. Joshua and his team of elite operatives venture into enemy territory, invading the heart of AI-occupied territory to find and destroy Nirmata — an AI in the form of a young child.

Born on June 1, 1975, in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the young Edwards admired movies such as the original 1977 classic Star Wars and went on to pursue a film career. The Welshman even cites George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as his biggest influences. He got his start in special visual effects, working on shows that aired on networks such as PBS, BBC and the Discovery Channel. In 2008, he entered the Sci-Fi-London 48-hour film challenge, where a movie had to be created from start-to-finish in just two days (which he won). Then he wrote and directed Monsters, his first full-length feature, which was shot in only three weeks. Edwards personally created the film’s special effects by using off-the-shelf equipment. Aside from its two main actors (real-life couple Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able), the crew consisted of just five people. The $500,000 thriller received a riotous reception and was released to great success.

The impact of Monsters resulted in Edwards becoming an alt-sci-fi movie-making star. With offers from major studios, Warner Bros. tapped him to direct an English-language reboot of the 1954 Japanese classic Gojira. His Godzilla re-visioning garnered mixed reviews but did tremendous box office. Following its success, producer Kathleen Kennedy had Edwards helm Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — a Star Wars spin-off — for Lucasfilm Limited. The film boasted a cast including Felicity Jones, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen and James Earl Jones among others.

Such an ensemble anchors this film as well. And while its story (co-written by Chris Weitz) doesn’t offer much of an innovative leap in a sci-fi narrative, it does have a spectacular view of an AI-infused future. The following Q&A is drawn from an appearance Gareth Edwards made shortly before the film’s release this week.

This is your fourth feature — and your fourth science fiction production as well. What is it about this genre that you just keep coming back to it?

Are there other genres…? I heard about this, films without robots in them and stuff. I think the best science fiction is a blend of genres. With my first film, I saw it as a love story meets science fiction. My second film, Godzilla, was like a disaster movie meets science fiction. Star Wars is probably a war movie meets science fiction. That’s a really good point because science fiction is at its best when it holds a mirror up to us. That definitely happens here. How did this come about? When and where did the inspiration hit you for The Creator? It was 7:32 p.m. on a Tuesday. There were numerous things that happened. I guess the most obvious one was after we had just finished Rogue One. My girlfriend — her family lives in Iowa — and I drove across America to go visit. As we were driving through the Midwest, there’s all sorts of farmlands with tall grass. I was just looking out the window. I had my headphones on and wasn’t trying to think of an idea for a film, but I was getting a little bit inspired. I just saw this factory in the middle of the tall grass. I remember it having a Japanese logo on it and I was thinking, “I wonder what they are making there?” Then I just started thinking — because that’s the way I am — my tendencies, it was like, “Probably robots, right?” Then I was thinking, “Okay, imagine you were a robot built in a factory. Then for the first time, you step outside into the field and look around and see the sky. I wonder what that would be like.” It felt like a really good moment in a movie, but I didn’t know what that movie was, and I threw it away. Suddenly he tapped me on the shoulder and went, “Oh, it could be this,” and these ideas started coming. By the time we pulled up to the house, I had the whole movie mapped out in my head, which never happens normally. I was like, “That’s a good sign. Maybe this might be my next thing.” It’s an original concept that you’re working with, how did you get New Regency on board as a producer?

I need to shout out to New Regency as you probably noticed in cinema recently, there’s very few original films being made. That’s because everyone’s gotten very gun shy with the franchises and IPs getting regurgitated a bit. Hats off to Yuri and Michael from New Regency for having the balls to take a big swing and do something like this. Some of my closest friends are concept artists and that’s probably because I know I need them to make my next film, so I asked all my friends… “Could you do some artwork for this idea I’ve got, I’ll pay you” and I started building up a library of imagery. Basically, I had about 50 images when I went into it. I kept it very secret because I didn’t want to put any pressure on it. I just went to New Regency and laid out all the artwork and talked them through the idea beat by beat — which I hate doing. I hate being a car salesman. I just wanted to hit play on the movie. That’s my favorite thing to do. Trying to sell it and speak with a microphone, it’s not my fun thing. You look at all that imagery and it was incredibly ambitious. The natural reaction was, “This is a $300 million film. We’d love to do it, but we can’t really do it.” I was like, “We’re going to do it very differently. We’ll film it with this very small crew and essentially reverse engineer the whole movie.” In theory, what you normally do is have all this design work and you have to build sets in a studio against a green screen — and it’ll cost a fortune. We were like, “We will shoot the movie in real locations in real parts of the world that look closest to what these images are. Then afterwards, when the film’s fully edited, we’ll get the production designer, James Klein, and other concept artists to paint over those frames and put the sci-fi on top.” Everyone was like, “It sounds great.” But basically, we had to really prove it to them. How many locations did you shoot?

On some of the other films I’ve done, I’m so lucky when I get away from the studio and go to a proper location a handful of times. On this one, we went to like 80 locations. We didn’t really use any green screen. There was occasionally a little bit here and there, but very little. If you do the math, and keep the crew small enough, the theory was that the cost of building a set — which is typically 200 grand apparently — you can fly everyone anywhere in the world for that kind of money. It was like, “Let’s keep the crew small and let’s go to these amazing locations.” We went to Nepal, the Himalayas, to active volcanoes in Indonesia, temples in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Tokyo for mega city stuff. Then we did a bit in Pinewood [Studios in London] using their stage and screen — everyone knows it from “The Mandalorian” — but the kind of special non green screen led screen environment.

Your antagonist in this feature is artificial intelligence — AI — but could your timing be any better?

The trick with AI is to get time in that sweet spot window where it’s before the Robo-apocalypse and not after — which I think is in November or maybe December. I think we got really lucky. The joke would be that when you write a film, especially a science fiction film, you avoid putting a date on it. I didn’t want to write a date for the movie because even Kubrick got it wrong. I was like, “Don’t write a date and then at some point, you have to. I did some math and picked 2070. Now I feel like an idiot because I should have gone for 2023. Everything that’s unfolded in the last few months or year is kind of scarily weird, especially when we’re showing it now. When we first pitched the movie to the studio, this idea of war with AI, everyone wanted to know the back story. Well, hang on. Why would we be at war with AI? It’s like, they’ve been banned because it kind of went wrong. But why would you ban AI? “It’s going to be great and blah, blah, blah.” It was all these sorts of ideas that you have to set up, that maybe humanity would reject this thing and not be cool about it. The way it’s played out, like the setup of our movie, is pretty much as it’s been for the last few months.

Set it up for us as the first scene begins?

To understand what’s going on, I would say, essentially, something terrible happened in America and AI got banned — it’s completely banned in the West. But in Asia, there was no such problem, so the world is divided in two camps. They carried on developing it until it was nearly human-like. So there’s this war going on over there — to wipe out AI [in Asia]. The person everybody’s after is called Nirmata — Public enemy #1 — which is basically a Nepalese word for the creator. From the Western perspective, this is the Osama bin Laden of our story. But from the Asian and AI perspective, this is like God.

When it came to prep and research, consulting with scientists and technological advisors, were you able to really dive into that?

That’s all I did for years. It was a bit like researching jet packs because I started writing this, I guess it was like in 2018, and it did feel back then like this was 30 years away. But when we were filming, we were in the middle of the jungle and driving to places when I got a text on my phone. There was that whole whistleblower account from one of the big tech companies thinking that AI had become self-aware. It really wasn’t on my radar back then in terms of being a reality, it was just something that [raised the question of] whether it’s a good or bad thing. In one way, humanity might get wiped out, but on the other hand, I get to make my dream film. So everyone wins.

What were some of the tools, some of the new innovations, when it came to cutting-edge technology, that you were able to take advantage of that didn’t exist when Rogue One came out in 2016?

Camera and film making technology has come a long way in the last few years. I needed the actors and me to have total freedom on set. Something we did on this film that was really important was that I wanted it to feel as realistic as possible. We would always be able to shoot in 360 degrees but the problem working against you when you try to do that in a film is [that] you have lights like we have here. The second you want to move the camera, you suddenly see the lights and you spend 20 minutes moving them. It takes forever to shoot a scene. The way we worked there was with really sensitive camera equipment in terms of how we could use the lights. They’re very lightweight. We’re all familiar with how lights have become. We thought we could set it up — you have a boom operator holding a pole with the microphone on. Why can’t you have a person holding a pole with a light on it? We had a best-boy type running around holding the light by hand. If the actor suddenly got up and did something — went over here and suddenly there was a better shot — I could move and suddenly the lighting could really be readjusted. What would normally take like 10 minutes to change was taking four seconds. We would do 25-minute takes where we’d play out the scene three or four times. It just gave everything, this atmosphere, this sort of naturalism and realism that I really wanted to get where it wasn’t so prescribed. Like you’re not putting marks on the ground and saying stand there. It wasn’t that kind of movie.

What about the casting process, particularly with leads John David Washington, Gemma Chan and Ken Watanabe?

With John David, we were casting the film during the pandemic. It was really hard to meet anybody but fortunately he lived in LA, and I just heard through his agent that he’d meet me any time I wanted to go for a meal. So I went to meet him, and he walked in — it’s the pandemic. He’s got his mask on, a Star Wars mask, like with the Star Wars logo on it. I initially thought, “He’s doing this because of “Rogue One.” He sat down and admitted that he’s a massive Star Wars fan and he’s like, “I’ve been wearing this mask every single day for like a year or whatever. It’s been for the whole pandemic. I thought about not wearing it to this meeting, but then it felt false, so I thought it’d be like a good ice breaker.” We hit it off straight away. I’d worked with Ken [Watanabe] before — he’s the only actor I’ve worked with twice. I don’t know if that says something about me. I always want to do something new and so for the longest time, I didn’t think about Ken for this role. The second he turned up on set, I felt like such an idiot, obviously it was supposed to be Ken from the beginning. Every time we held the camera up and Ken’s in the shot, it felt like this strange hybrid — it’s meeting Star Wars or something, which was exactly what we were going for. He gave us goosebumps. There’s something about that guy. He’s just got this face that, I think, is the reason he’s so successful internationally; it’s not really about what he says. He can convey so much with just his looks; he’s so good. How did you find the right Alphie? What was that casting process?

We basically did an open casting call around the world and I think we got hundreds of videos. Thankfully, I didn’t have to watch all of them. They sent me like the top 70 or something and then we met. I went to meet, I forget, about ten kids. The first one was Madeleine who plays Alfie. She came in and did this scene. We were all nearly in tears at the end. I thought to myself “This is weird and phenomenal. Maybe the mum was just brilliant at prepping her to get really upset just before she came in. There was some little trick going on. So we chatted a bit and we did some other scenes and then right at the end — I was a bit cruel — I was like, “Could we just try one more thing?” I just wanted to see if it was repeatable. “Can we do another scene?” I explained a different scene and we just improvised it and she was even more heartbreaking. I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t found the right kid. We got really lucky. I’m glad I live in the universe where that happened because the movie lives or dies [with her]. I hate movies about little kids because they can be so annoying and that was my biggest fear — are we going to do one of these really annoying kid movies? It was the biggest relief because she’s beyond her years. She was really something.

How was it working with John David Washington and vice versa?

She’s quite “method.” I can tell she does “method” a lot because we only knew each other during the filmmaking process. But it’s like she kept everybody at arm’s reach. I was allowed in a little bit. But she and John David were inseparable. He became a brother or father figure. I’m not sure which. What’s amazing is that I thought I was going to have to trigger it. So when we deal with sex and all the scenes, I need this to be like a documentary so we can pull this performance out of this, this girl without kind of like her having to act and she could act her pants off, you know what I mean? She was amazing at it. it was a director’s dream; you could just tell her what Alfie was thinking and this amazing performance came out. I’d look at the other actors and[think] be why can’t you be like this — what’s your problem?

Talk about filming those combat scenes and how did they differ from the ones in Rogue One? Obviously, we went to the Maldives and that wasn’t bad. We went to shoot real exterior locations. Everything in this movie is the closest thing we could do to be what the artwork suggested it should be. I glimpsed it a little bit when we were in Thailand. We needed to find a really technologically advanced factory. We looked everywhere. There were car manufacturing plants that were nervous about us filming but eventually we found a particle accelerator and it’s one of the most advanced, probably in the whole of Thailand. We were like, “Please, please, please, could you let us film.” It looked amazing. It had that whole circular thing going on. We went to visit, and they were like, “There’s no way you’re going to be allowed to film here.” They asked what do you want to do? Why are there people with guns shooting and explosions? This is like a multi-multimillion dollar facility with all these leading cutting-edge scientists. Then, at the very last minute, someone was like, “What filmmaker is doing this?” They were like, “It’s this guy from the States or whatever. He lives over there, but he’s English. And they go, “What films has he done?” They went, “He did this Star Wars film called “Rogue One.” And then, they were like, “Can we be in it?” We were like, “Sure, whatever. Everybody was in those scenes, with everyone running around. They’re nuclear physicists — they really are — and they were amazing.

You did a lot of location work. Isn’t that right?

We went into real locations. We wanted it to feel like we were making a student film to some extent. But it got to the point where like that beach scene where Gemma’s running and there’s all that crossfire. It was the beginning of when the pandemic restrictions were lifted, and Thailand was opening up to tourists. They’re like, “You can film on this beach, but you can’t close it. so it’s like, “How are we going to do that scene where there’s tourists there. I don’t know what happens normally in Thailand at night on these beaches. But with the stuff that’s in the movie and the trailer, we didn’t close the beach. If you look carefully in the background, you can see cars and tourists, but one person came over and went, “What are you doing?” It was just the four of us with a camera running around so it didn’t look like this big, massive movie. The goal hopefully was that it all ends up on the screen. We tried to be very efficient about it.

So further along in the film, what do we see?

Further on the journey, we have Joshua and now Alfie. The best way to say it is that Joshua infiltrated the AI village with the insurgents and guerrillas. Basically they’ve abducted the child. As this is happening, it seems that the Americans have also arrived. Essentially these rockets ascend into the air, and they smoke out the whole village and then it all unfolds from there. 

What would you list as your cinematic influences for The Creator? What movies should we see as companion pieces?

Since my first film, I put up posters in the edit suite of movies that had inspired the film I was doing. There are some really obvious ones you’d probably predict. But there’s a film called Baraka. The cinematographer from that film went on and directed another film called Samsara, which is one of the greatest movies ever made. Lone Wolf and Cub is a Japanese manga series. There’s a whole bunch of films called Sword of Vengeance. The really obvious ones are Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner. In terms of this film’s dynamic, maybe there’s a little bit of Rain Man [in it]. It’s a journey of someone normal and someone who’s a little bit special. And there’s Paper Moon, with its dynamics. 

What was your inspiration behind the robot designs? And talk about working with your costume designer for the entire film.

A lot of the costumes were done by the WETA Workshop in New Zealand. Peter Jackson and ILM [Industrial Light and Magic] did all the visual effects — or a lot of them — plus some by the vendors around the world. We tried to summarize the design and aesthetic of the movie as a bit retro futuristic. Imagine if Apple Mac hadn’t won the tech war and Sony Walkman had. everything has this sort of ’90s/ ‘80s kind of Walkman/Nintendo thing. We looked at all the product designs from that era and riffed off little pieces and tried to put them into the robots. The tricky thing with designing robot heads was to pull from sources. We did a whole pass at one point where we took insect heads and then tried to make it as if that insect had been made by Sony — like the praying mantis — and changed it into product design. Then we took products and tried to turn them into organic looking heads. We took things like film projectors, vacuum cleaners — things like that — and then just messed around. I just kept experimenting; it was like evolution in real life, like DNA getting merged and trying to create something better than the previous thing.

Being a big science fiction director, who are some of the directors and writers that you looked up to and get inspiration from?

There are the obvious people — Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Ridley Scott. It’s the high benchmark of essentially what we were trying to do. I’m not saying we got anywhere close to achieving it, but the goal of the movie was to try and go back to that style and type of film that we grew up loving, like the film was shot on 1970s anamorphic lenses and things like this. Actually, I hate writing. It’s like doing homework. The worst thing in the world is having to write a screenplay. The only way I can bring myself to do it is to lock myself in somewhere nice. I’m not allowed to leave until I’ve finished. I’ll stay there for like a month or something. I went to Thailand, to the exact place where the beach ended. I didn’t realize I was getting inspired for the movie. I just picked this nice resort, and it was like a recurring theme like in the Maldives and now this beach resort in town. Whilst I was there, a filmmaker friend who was in Vietnam said, “Come over and we’ll just do a little trip.” I went there and you can’t just go around that country and not think of all the imagery from films like Apocalypse Now. Now I can, but I was writing this science fiction film. So everything I was looking at in my mind was like robots, spaceships and things. You’d see Buddhist monks going to temples and I’d picture a robot Buddhist monk. I just spent the whole time going, “Oh my God, what is this movie?” This feels like there was something so appealing about it, this mix of Blade Runner meets Apocalypse Now.

What was the biggest challenge filming this? I wouldn’t say it was a particular thing; it was more just the duration of it. We started filming in January 2022 and we finished in June. We were there for six months and it was like nonstop 40-degree heat, people were dying every day. it was a dream looking back at it, to get to do that. But there was a point where you wanted to collapse and you felt like, “He’s only done seven days of filming and there’s still all that is still left. The first cut of this movie was five hours long and we had so much great, cool material but everything that’s in this film is all the best stuff. The editing process was basically like a game of Jenga where we would pull things out and see if we missed it or it fell apart. We had it packed by the end through the editors, but we finally got it down to two hours. It’s like the old adage “less is more” most of the time.

What are the highest and best values of humanity that you hope this movie ultimately illustrates? I hope some sort of empathy for others [is there]. That’s a strong value which is very important. When this film began, I obviously didn’t know AI was going to do what it ended up doing this last year. AI was really in the fairy tale of this story. We want to get rid of people who are different from us. All kinds of fascinating things start to happen while you write that script. You start to think, “Are they real? How would you know and what if you didn’t like what they were doing? Can you turn them off? What if they didn’t want to be turned off?” This sort of stuff started to play out which became as strong as the premise and that’s what I’m most proud of. 

Two words for you: Hans Zimmer.

Everyone’s iPhone tells you the last 25 most played tracks or something like that. I looked at [mine] out of curiosity and I think 14 were Hans Zimmer tracks. I was like, “I don’t know how we get composer Han Zimmer, but we have to try.” Joe Walker, editor of Rogue One, assembled the film. He had worked with Hans a lot and was like, “I’ll talk to him.” We ended up in this strange situation where I had to call Hans whilst in the middle of nowhere; we were going to meet the head of the military in Thailand to get permission to film the Black Hawks for one of those sequences. It was this massive deal meeting that took months and months to organize. It happened to be the same moment that Hans was available to do a Zoom. We had to pull off the road. It was like a hotel in the middle of nowhere and they had Wi-Fi. I go in there and get Hans and the worst thing in the world is that they said you’ve got to leave in 30 minutes. You can’t stay because the whole military is waiting for us over here. I was looking at this clock and Hans started telling his anecdotes about The Dark Knight and Terrence Malick. All my life I’ve wanted to talk to him about these films and I have to go,” I’m really sorry, Hans, I have to leave now.” It was so against every bone in my body to come away from that.

Talk about working with Oscar-winning cinematographer Greig Fraser.

I obviously worked with Greig on Rogue One. Greig had to make this work as well. We were totally on the same page and Greig’s very rebellious. and despite how it might look because he’s, you know, doing his big movies. But we’re both during that, like the build up to this film, I got to go around one of these virtual reality studios where they had this poster on the wall as to how you make a movie. it was every part of the process, and I was just looking at it going, “What a strange thing to have. Why are they doing it? Why have they got this poster?” The guy who ran the thing came up to me and went, “Oh, I see you looking at the poster — that’s 100 years old.” When I looked at it, I realized the typography was like 100 years old. We haven’t changed how films are made in 100 years. We still do it the same way. With all these new digital tools and technology, there are other ways to make films. People like Greig and I really want to do things differently because that’s how you make a different type of movie. The process is as important as the screenplay to some extent.

Let’s talk about the opportunity and power of science fiction to drive social commentary and reflection. 

I like science fiction because there’s a chance to sneak ideas under the radar. My favorite TV show growing up was The Twilight Zone which was in the ’50s and ’60s. Rod Serling, who wrote a lot of those shows, had said the reason he did science fiction was because he could get out from under the radar of the censors and say things you’re not normally allowed to say out loud. If you start to type and work out a film, and you go, “I want to make a film about this. It’s got to have this social commentary to it”— it will be a rubbish film. If you get attracted to an idea, there’s something primal about it that pulls you in. There’s something that needs to be said about this subject matter but about halfway through making or writing a film is when you start to realize what that thing is. It’s like a child who tells you what they want to be when they grow up. You learn what it is and then you try to help it along. Science fiction does it the best because we all go through our lives with certain beliefs, and they never really get tested. You do everything you’re supposed to do but science fiction says, what if the world had this different thing about it. Would your little idea still work, and you hit against the wall? The thing you used to think was true starts to be false. And you begin to question things. I love that kind of storytelling. I hope our film does a little bit of that.

[For fans of this film or any genre film, go to Big Apple Comic Con‘s Christmas Con, taking place in the New Yorker Hotel this December 16th, 2023, www.BigAppleCC.com. There are many opportunities to steep yourself in sci-fi and other graphic story collectibles. Get posters and other collateral available from The Creator and many others as your stocking stuffers.]

Copyright ©2023 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 28, 2023.

Photos © 2023. Courtesy of 20th Century Studios. All rights reserved.

[aufdemzauberberg]

when amazon tells me the film i rented will only be available for 48 hours it is in fact challenging me to watch it as often as possible in those 48 hours so i'll get the maximum out of my four quid on top of meticulously analysing every single scene word for word longing stare for longing stare bottom lip quiver for bottom lip quiver this is the way the capitalist gods intended it to be. be obsessed hard and fast

[shrekgogurt]

Thank you for the tags today @artsyunderstudy @cutestkilla @you-remind-me-of-the-babe and Sunday @theearlgreymage @fatalfangirl

I have been strong-armed by @larkral although I wasn’t originally planning to post today because I haven’t written all that much and felt bad about it. In fact, I’m very grateful that @martsonmars posted about focusing on writing as a hobby because reading through their post and comments helped me take a little bit of pressure off myself too.

Here is some from “Escape to Space” which is pretty slow-going right now ACK!:

“Baz…” Snow wavers like he actually is injured again, “You’re wearing jeans.”

I tilt my head, “I am. And your hand is still down your pants.”

He immediately throws both arms in the air like some fugitive caught red-handed, “It’s not- I’m not- my sword!”

It takes him a moment, but then he grows even redder.

“Not my sword, but my sword. Like my actual blade.”

And here is actually some from a remix of @yellobb “48 Hours of Hell” I may never publish/finish but exists mainly for me to work out my own past 48 Hour Film Fest angst lol:

Penny thinks I’m jealous of Baz. Of course I’m jealous but I’m never admitting it out loud. He’s rich. He’s talented. But, I’m convinced he’s only talented because he’s rich. If I had his resources I’m sure I’d book gigs filming weddings and concerts and my ex-girlfriend's sorority recruitment video. Instead, I have to rent out all my equipment from the same place I bust my ass for minimum wage. Well, fine. It’s not a challenging job. I get to work on my homework during most shifts. Still, Baz is one of those music tech majors who thinks he’s a god for being in the conservatory and treats media production majors like bumbling idiots. It pisses me off.

Anywho I hope you all are live, laugh, and loving it up! I’m gonna go grab some dinner with friends and try to start the semester off strong! I don’t know if y’all have published today but idk I’m just going to throw out some usernames @ileadacharmedlife @moodandmist @onepintobean @palimpsessed @raenestee @simonsnowsfreckles @thewriterxj (BECAUSE I’M LOVING YOUR CURRENT SEASON TO TASTE WIP EVERYONE GO READ IT YOU ARE LEGALLY REQUIRED BY LAW FOR READING THIS POST) okayyyyyy byeeeeee

[gh0stchip]

My 48 hour short film challenge just released!

[nrtomf]

Work in Progress Part 2 [1MinFilms] (4K)

Hello all, so here is the second minute of the short film we did a few years back. It was made under the theme of the 48 hours challenge. This is a work in progress since we could not edit it in time, and it was only for fun so there was less pressure. More to come, hopefully, a minute at a time :) and the sound still needs work :/ Still

[winterfliee]

｡*♡ Doing the 48HC ｡*♡

So the 3dolc+roe challenge made me realise i love doing manifestation challenges and that's why I'm going to do the new 48HC challenge by @zen-shu

What I'm manifesting:-

Some y/n moment

Going on a shopping spree

Polaroid or film camera

Desired backpack

Samsung galaxy s22 ultra in green

Living in my desired home

Knowing every answer without having to study

Yes I've decided to go all in this time i used to worry about not getting results and Manifesting "big" things but i realised that wasn't exactly living in the end so yeah we're going ALL in

What I'm going to do:-

Affirm "i Manifest anything i want within 48 hours"

"i have everything from my *what I'm manifesting* list"

Start- 25/7/22

End- 27/7/22

[picavecalyx]

Also. I forgot if i shared this year's 48 hour challenge film on this blog . Yall should watch it :)

[euphoricfilter]

university update: funky brain edition 😧

guys… i think i’m the problem LMAO

it’s been well established in my life that social settings and me just don’t work well because i have a funky brain that doesn’t like me but ☹️ i’m in a gross mood again and i probably know why and i know it’s irrational and silly and no one cares but my brain does and it sucks

we went to film some stuff for this video we have to submit by thursday, and the theme is dream sequence so we chose to film once it got dark out. hurdle one that is making me feel bad is, i forgot my keys to get back upstairs to my room which is extremely unusual for me because i make sure i have everything 5 times before i leave. and then i had to ask one of the people i live with if they could come all the way downstairs to open the door and i feel really bad and she’s really nice but i feel so shitty about it + having people in my room filming for this project threw me off even though we were here for like 5 minutes max

then just being out until sorta late? not late enough past my bedtime but late enough that it pushed into my usual night time schedule that feels like it has to be done otherwise i can’t sleep. which is also stupid because obviously days like this are gonna happen and not everything is gonna go my way all the time

and then like the last hour of us being out i felt like dookie because i wanted to just go lay down but obviously i couldn’t do that because we had less than 48 hours to finish this silly little project. which by the way, whoever told the lecturers that students like time crunch challenges are silly because brother what the hell. that’s not a lot of time

and then one of the girls i’m working with kept bringing up meeting tomorrow and i just can’t. i like don’t have it in me and i feel yucky and horrible and not fun and i just feel bad. like really bad and nothing i’m doing is fixing it. and i thought i’d buy myself a treat to make it better but now i feel worse because i didn’t actually need a treat and i said i was gonna stop buying them. i’m meant to be eating healthy and not spending money on stuff like that but ☹️