Newsletter 26

The winter film festival is so close I can taste it and.. that’s odd.. it tastes a lot like cranberry sauce. Not that crappy homemade stuff either, I’m talking about the kind that slides out of the can as a perfect cylinder. Whatever dude. Here’s the news.

Winter Film Festival Tickets!!!!

Tickets are now available for the winter film festival! Shows are 7pm and 9pm January 20th, 27th, and 28th. How do I get a ticket you ask. Well, you can call us at 586-3440 or you can email me or you can stop by Lucid Reverie anytime we’re open. When are we open? Even I don’t know. We’ve got short films coming out our ears and we’ll be frantically putting the show together over this next week. We’ve got a lot to choose from so it should be great!

Just to clarify the rules on tickets, if you have a ticket you need to be in the door at least five minutes before the show. After that you’re probably going to lose your seat to someone. Don’t take more tickets than you need and if you have extras at the door let us know so we can let more people in. We try to have as many seats as we have tickets but secretly we like watching you all squeeze into each other’s laps. It builds community.

Filmmaker Workshops with Warren Etheredge

Now this is something! Warren has offered to give constructive criticism to any filmmaker who wants to hear it. It will probably help you more than it will hurt you so I recommend taking him up on the offer.

Our two workshops with Warren are Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 4:00 at the downtown library. Saturday we will go over a few JUMP Society films and discuss more broadly the language of film and visual filmmaking. Sunday we will concentrate on writing and directing for comedy. Both workshops should be very beneficial for filmmakers or aspiring filmmakers.

Warren is a teacher at TheFilmSchool, Director of Development for Lockspring Pictures and he organizes and hosts an almost endless string of events for TheWarrenReport in Seattle. He’s also has wicked quarter lagging skillz.

There is no registration for the class but we’d appreciate a hint if you plan on attending. I don’t know what we’ll do if we get more than we can seat. Probably build more community. I figure it’s possible to fit twenty five guys into a phone booth so we should be able to pack everyone into that conference room in the library.

Many thanks to the Friends of the Library who have made these workshops possible with their support!

Poster Monkeys Needed

Eek Ook! Calling all Poster Monkeys! We need help hanging up film festival posters so this is your big chance to join the mobile poster monkey death squad. Ideally no actual death will be involved. Just good wholesome poster hanging fun! Yay!

Submission Guidelines

This year we have the most submissions we’ve ever seen. We have a mountain of movies here and unless we play the whole show in fast forward we’re going to have to make some cuts. This doesn’t mean they can’t be edited and resubmitted in the future, it just means we won’t be showing them all this time around. We’ve posted some submission guidelines and tips on getting your film into the next festival on the website. There’s also a submission form that will help us keep better track of the entries in the future. Good Luck!

Laters

We’ll release the names of films that have been accepted to the festival sometime next week. For now just keep on keepin’ on and I’ll see you at the show!

Newsletter 25

Visual Storytelling Workshop

Ever wanted to make a great film? Be patient, it takes small steps, why not start by joining us this Tuesday night, December 13th, at the Ruby Room for a Visual Storytelling Workshop.

The workshop will focus on several elements of visual storytelling and look at how we can convey meaning through specific imagery. If you’re a beginner this will be a great chance to pick up some basics and if you already know it all you can come show off your big pulsating brain by answering all the questions and heckling me when I make mistakes.

Web Site Overhaul

Calling all JUMP Society filmmakers! You may have noticed the redesign of the website which features a stylized picture of filmmaker Gage Choat in the upper right hand corner. What we’d like to do is take pictures of other JUMP Society filmmakers that we can rotate in that position. If you’re interested in being on the site, stop by the office and get your photo taken with your favorite prop or costume or maybe try out that signature pose you’ve been perfecting.

Let us know what else we can do with the site… Do you have a website you want us to link to? Do you have a movie online or do you need a place to put one? Maybe we should start a photo album? Does anyone have production stills or photos of JUMP Society stickers in the wild?

Check in on the new site evolution at Jumpsociety.com

National Film Challenge

If you haven’t yet cast your vote for the Juneau film “Snarfl’xxing with Humons� then bounce on over to the National Film Challenge and get your democracy on.

January Show DEaDliNe

Better get moving, the due date for the next festival is January 7th!

Best of the Northwest Film Festival Followup

Yeeearrrrrghhh! Limited edition duck prints! Bah! Grumble. Well maybe we can write it off as a lesson in remix culture. Lesbian makeout movies and duck auctions are actually pretty funny together but I promise it will never happen again. Sorry. Grumble grumble. If anyone wants to borrow the DVD let me know.

Laters

I’m out of here but I’ll see you in class on Tuesday night. No spitwads.

National Film Challenge Finals

The short film “Snarfl’xxing with Humons” created by Alaska Robotics has been selected as one of the top 15 finalists in a nationwide short film competition.

The National Film Challenge is an annual competition in which teams have a weekend to frantically script, film, and edit a short film. The filmmakers are given a quote, genre, prop, and character which they must also include in the film.

Alaska Robotics and Flakey Productions were the two local teams involved in the challenge which included 161 teams from 32 states. Both Alaskan films had to include a stringed instrument as a prop, a character who was an inventor, and the line “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.” Alaska Robotics was assigned the sci-fi genre and Flakey Productions was assigned the detective/cop genre.

The National Film Challenge hasn’t yet announced any of the prize winners, just the 15 finalists for grand prize and the audience choice award. Last year there were about 50 categories including things like acting, sound design, graphics, best in genre, and best use of props and both Juneau teams are still in the running for any of those.

View the film “Snarfl’xxing with Humons” and cast your vote for the audience choice award!