Funny You Never Knew is playing in Glasgow at the GFT on July 3rd! To all my Scottish friends: Don't miss out!! I will be there and can't wait to see you all! There'll be a Q&A with myself and editor Colin Goudie (Star Wars: Rogue One) so it's going to be a fun night. You can get tickets here:https://glasgowfilm.org/sho…/funny-you-never-knew-qanda-nc-5
Viewing entries in
Directing
Yes - another award! My co-editor, Colin Goudie (Star Wars: Rogue One) and I won the award for "Outstanding Achievement in Filmmaking: Editing (Documentary) for "Funny You Never Knew."
The award stands as a marker to what was an amazing experience getting to work with Colin again. Those of you who know Colin, or have worked with him, will be nodding in agreement here because Colin is just one of those rare human beings who brings all of himself to a project and cares as much about you as person as he does about the film he's working on.
I’ve included some photos from our time at the Newport Beach Film Festival. It was a fantastic Film Festival and we had an absolute ball with both our premiere and repeat screenings getting sold out and each having a waiting list!
Highlight for me, personally, however, was driving Fred Willard and Bill Hayes home after our premiere screening and hearing some amazing stories about how Fred ended up doing the cult classic “Spinal Tap” and the amazing people they’ve both worked with over the years. So cool!
FYNK is playing at the Hoboken International Film Festival on Saturday May 18th at 8pm. Tickets can be purchased here: https://tickets.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=4d2f5bf59431f219a174cda624877551&vqitq=05ae7b3b-a082-4bd3-92b8-ae7ea701a4b5&vqitp=c5d972d9-959a-4ba4-99b6-1f991a97f51f&vqitts=1557335383&vqitc=vendini&vqite=itl&vqitrt=Safetynet&vqith=98bf0929212ffc7c91ff1adf6045d2b2
Our film just won the Gold REMI award at the 52nd annual Worldfest Houston International Film Festival last night. It’s been a fun week with lots of great movies, networking and even a trip to the Houston Space Center!
After our win at Garden State for Best Documentary Feature Film this award for “Best Director of a Feature Film” at the Chicago Comedy Film Festival is a great honor. Thank you Chicago! We’re in Houston this week screening at the 52nd annual Worldfest Houston International Film Festival and we’ve been nominated here also so we’ll see what happens!
One of the many joys of being in the Chicago Comedy Film Festival was that the film reviewer Danielle Solzman saw our film and wrote a review. You can read it here: http://www.solzyatthemovies.com/2019/04/06/chicago-comedy-2019-funny-you-never-knew/
Had the delightful pleasure of being interviewed on Radio by the lovely Patti Vasquez of Chicago’s WGN. You can hear it here:
Some photos from the opening night at the 2019 Garden State Film Festival where our film had its East Coast premiere.
"Funny You Never Knew"
Currently In Post-Production: I'm making a feature documentary entitled "Funny You Never Knew" about the re-discovery of three amazing comedians from the 1950's, Imogene Coca, George Gobel and Martha Raye as experienced through two contemporary comedians, Fred Willard and Kevin Pollak. Interviews include Lily Tomlin, Bob Newhart, George Schlatter, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, Tom Smothers, Jack Carter, Carol Channing, Alan Young, Hal Kanter, and Rose Marie.
The project is the brainchild of Karl Tiedemann, the film's Executive Producer, who used to write for David Letterman, Robert Klein, Disney etc. and is a respected expert on America's early years of comedy.
If you have a favorite story, clip or episode from any one of the three I'd love to hear it. Drop me a line or leave a comment below. Thanks!
The images above were from a celebrity shoot I did earlier this year as a part of Bloomingdale's October Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It was the second time I'd used the Canon 5D MKII and the results were excellent. It wouldn't be my first camera of choice tho, in general at least, and would rely largely on what I was shooting. The audio problems are solvable with a decent sound guy and I don't mind syncing things up in post like the old days but I do find shooting on a compressed format (H.264) annoying when it comes to grading the image in post. The color information is just not there and you feel like you are dealing with some 8bit image. When I first started using the camera I was transcoding it, as one must, to an editable format like prores422 but have since started using the prores422 (HQ) setting to ensure I take as much color information into the grade. There's no doubt that you'll pay for anything incorrectly exposed with this camera and it simply doesn't carry the same latitude to afford a "fix in post" mentality.
Having said all that, the big chip and a long lens produces a beautiful and very shallow depth of field that is wonderfully cinematic and makes going back to an EX3 or the like - without any film adapter - quite disappointing.
For this shoot I needed a two camera set up so that I could walk away with two angles out of each interview. As is often the case when filming celebrities we were not given long with each person so a big plus of the Canon 5D MKII is it's cost point, making a two camera shoot easily affordable.
I wouldn't want to shoot a "run 'n gun" styled documentary with one of these but in the right circumstance it's an amazing tool to have at your disposal. Did I mention it also takes great stills!
Please note: All photos above were taken by the wonderful Tim Greeson. (http://timothygreesonphotography.com/)
The following photos show how the interviews were used in the Bloomingdale's stores. These were taken at the flagship store in Manhattan.
I recently completed production on a six episode series based on the New York Times bestselling book "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller. Check out some behind the scenes production stills below. The series comes out in October. You can see the trailer for it in my Films section or simply click here to go to that page.
The Reason for God DVD cover
UPDATE: The series has sold really well. DVD sales exceeded the entire first year targets within the first month of release! You can buy it on Amazon or at www.timothykeller.com
The Love Game wins!
The HIFF was a blast. The screening went well as did the Q&A. It was the things outside of that though which were the most enjoyable. We were put up in a beautiful house next to the beach owned by the president of the Whitney Museum which was beautiful to say the least. Then we were invited to several parties and met some interesting people, not least of which for me included Alec Baldwin. I'd heard he was very supportive of emerging filmmakers and he certainly came across that way. On top of it all I had my first experience of a pulled pork roll at a Texas BBQ restaurant. Not something you'd find down home in NZ. It was awesome!