The Skylark

Film Update #4 – Sweet Nothing! by blakehamilton

We have loads of news, but first I’d like to thank you all for sticking with this blog the last two weeks. Keith and I were slacking on the posts, but for good reason; we spent the last month finishing our screenplay and other submission content for the Ultimate Filmmaker Competition. I’m very excited to report that WE ARE DONE! The receipt of the materials was confirmed by the Filmmaker’s Alliance, and now we just have to try to wait patiently.

Keith and I spent many long days rewriting THE SKYLARK line by line, as we reported in previous posts. Overall, we trimmed a lot of fat and worked to heighten conflict where the pace felt slow. Along the way we received vital feedback from our friend Alan Poon and our wonderful ladies Julie and Sarah. We are all extremely excited by the finished product. I think it reads great, and as a director I can now SEE the film, which is when I know it’s working.

After completing the screenplay, we still had to submit three essay questions, plus a 7 minute video interview and a sample of our work. In my opinion, The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition earns it’s name by pushing it’s entrants to think through every aspect of their project and document it. The experience has been invaluable.

We decided to shoot our video interview in Central Park and cut it as a mini-documentary. This meant a lot of editing in a very brief amount of time. Alan shot some beautiful footage and we lucked out with a picturesque rainy day.

I decided to hold off on editing the interview until after we finished our screenplay, which only gave me about three days. I put in more than 40 hours in one weekend, cutting in music, photographs, old home-videos, and other b-roll.

For the work sample, Keith and I decided to submit the trailer for our first collaboration, UNFURL, along with our newest short film in its entirety. Now, here’s the not so great news:

COMBAT ROCK is now SWEET NOTHING

We managed to acquire the rights to music from The Velvet Underground, Depeche Mode, and Nina Simone for our small project, but ran into some resistance from The Clash. Such is life. Therefore, we have changed the name of the movie to SWEET NOTHING after the Velvet Underground song Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ which starts and ends the film.

I’m very excited that you’ll all finally be able to see some of the fruits of our labor in the coming weeks as the Filmmaker’s Alliance posts our work on their site. Get ready to vote and keep on checking back here. We’ll be posting outtakes from our interview and a lot of other content.

And finally, to celebrate the delivery of our work, here’s something beautiful in Central Park:

And another weeping ukulele to brighten your day:

Thanks again for the support!

-blake

1 Comment so far
Leave a comment