I love going to weddings where I recognize a dozen strangers who all look at me with that look that says, “I think that guy has stalked me before…” This tends to happen a lot with referral weddings, with everyone but the original couple who referred me, that is. Erika and Dean were at this wedding (and in three sheets to the wind-type spirits!), which was a charming and good time for all. And for the first time, I brought an assistant to use my new Canon Rebel t1i (yes I do have to write out the entire model name, because I’m a huge nerd) to document the occasion.

 

Once again, HD has proven its infinite superiority over tape shooting on this occasion. During my shoot, about halfway through the portrait session at the MSU campus, my camera blipped and showed me the two words I dread seeing the most: “Check card.” This means something in the data stream has been corrupted. Ordinarily I would be in a panic, but this isn’t the first time that this has happened to me. When a memory card goes wonky, you can recover it because it’s all digital; when a tape screws up, loosen the strings on your refund purse.

 

Thanks to the recovery program, Stellar Phoenix, and the good people at Divergence Media (namely Colin) for inventing Clipwrap, all the footage was recovered flawlessly. The edit is coming along beautiful and you can expect to see new demos soon.

 

Congratulations to Jessica and Jon!!

 

 

It seems almost inconceivable that the first wedding of the year I’m actually shooting for my own company, that I’ll have to edit, is finally coming up this weekend… and it’s nearly freaking June!! People aren’t kidding when they say the market is drying up for wedding vendors. Looks like everyone and their mother is trying to cut costs by having relatives with little crappy HD cameras shoot their wedding or hiring a video student with no equipment to do it just because Chip will do it for $100. Not just anyone can shoot a wedding, you know. Believe me when I say that. When I worked for Starshowz, the majority of the edits I had to turn around weren’t weddings I shot, and let’s just say you never realize how truly good you are until you see how someone can royally screw the dog essentially doing the same job on a “professional level”. One guy in particular comes to mind… and now another… and there’s a third one…. Memory lane is occasionally paved with a slick coat of doggy dooky.

 

But with that said, I’m still not starving by any means, and I hope that my new partnership with DSP Fotographie (no I’m not spelling that wrong) yields a vast amount of rewards. I met with Meghan and her partner Dmitriy last week, and they’re charming as hell with a wealth of talent to match. I look forward to seeing how this collaboration works out.

 

 

Also, in the world of film, there’s cause for celebration! Purple Heart’s Final Beat has been accepted into its fifth film festival! This June, my short film about the reality facing returning American veterans will be screened as part of the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, and it marks the first time that the film will be shown theatrically outside the US! I am so excited and I can’t wait for the day to come. But in the meantime I’m faced with the added pressure of either getting a passport or an extended license. It seems that my lax approach to the subject – okay, I’ll just call it what it is: apathy – has caught up with me and I’ll have to get cracking on getting my birth certificate. I’m still at a loss to explain how the hell I lost it. On my second – and last – trip to Canada as a booze-craving 19 year old, I put the certificate in a copy of Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut and figured it would stay there. Damn gremlins…

 

 

And our final bit of news for the week: In a surprise to end them all, The Haywire Effect will be screened theatrically this October as part of Connie Mangilin’s Mitten Movie Project. That night, a vote will be tallied to see if the crowd would be in favor of seeing the Best of the 2011 MMP shorts reviewed the following January. It’s going to be interesting to see how a webisode of a movie review plays to a packed house full of nerds.

 

In the effort to make sure that it plays as well as possible, I have begun revising the original episode with new jokes and all new narration. I was never truly satisfied with my original efforts and now that the episode will be screened, it’s given me the opportunity to complete it more to my liking. However, just because I’ve already started work on it doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing it any time soon. I have no intention of posting the “director’s cut” online until after the Mitten Movie Project screens it, so if you want to see it first, you’ll have to attend!!

It’s a question I’m getting more frequently and it does deserve an answer. So here it goes…

 

 

One of my main goals with The Haywire Effect was to hopefully secure a spot on the website ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, which plays host to a rogue’s gallery of online reviewers who riff on everything from Z-rated martial arts flicks to video games and comic books. I’ve come to have a great deal of admiration for these guys, especially the site’s creator Doug Walker, known better as the Nostalgia Critic. What he’s managed to accomplish in only three years is pretty damn impressive, going from being just a lone reviewer to being featured in Entrepreneur Magazine for his work.

 

So, needless to say, when I received a rejection letter from Doug and his brother Rob, I was a little downtrodden about it. But that didn’t mean I was quitting. It just reminded me that you have to be original to stand out in a world that’s becoming more and more saturated with angry nerds staring into a camera from their couch, bitching about the latest bad movie they just discovered in the Wal-Mart bargain bin. What can I do to stand apart from those other guys?

 

 

Well, the first trick will be to remove myself from the whole “guy on his couch” equation. The Haywire Effect is going to be reformatted completely to include guest critics, skits, fake funny commercials, and numerous other gimmicks that I’m sure will be created along the way. It will be hosted like a variety show (i.e., Conan) with a similar layout, but the focus will be on lampooning movie news and crappy films.

 

The other trick will be to bring the length of the actual reviews down. Despite my best efforts to keep things under a certain running time, I have the tendency to cram a lot of information into my videos, and each review just got longer. Now, as I look back on them, I’ve come to realize just how much could have been lost with more concise editing and a few flicks of the red pen. I believe that a collaboration of efforts with a guest reviewer in a more conversationalist style is going to help that a lot.

 

 

So, when will it happen? If you thought you were gonna get a definitive date out of me, it’s not going to happen right now. There’s a lot of variables to consider, such as the busy pace of the wedding season, the necessity of bills, and whether or not the proposed “Best of the Mitten Movie Project 2010” review will happen. But am I scrapping the show? Absolutely not. The Haywire Effect may be a lot of work for not a lot of return at the moment, but it’s a passion that I harbor a lot of love for and in a way, it’s how I pay back all those awesome reviewers online who have made me laugh so hard on my down days.

 

To Doug, James, and Noah: Thanks guys.