Filed under: Canon 5d Mark ii, Combat Rock, Screenwriting, Skylark, Sweet Nothing, Uncategorized, Video
*UPDATE: Because distributing the video on vimeo can be considered broadcasting, we’ve been advised to pull it for music copyright reasons (we have acquired festival rights only). Therefore the film is still on the site, but has been password protected. If you would like to have access to the film for private use only, please email us @ info@thehamiltonbrothers.com.
Now that SWEET NOTHING (formerly titled COMBAT ROCK) has been made available at The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition website, we figured it’s time to present the film to you here in glorious HD! However, please continue to direct your traffic to the competition site to vote and support independent film.
While finishing the screenplay for our feature film, THE SKYLARK, Keith and I thought it would be fun to create a companion piece that tells a little bit of back story. THE SKYLARK is about a brilliant young musician struggling to survive after losing his older brother/band-mate in a tragic accident. This short film, SWEET NOTHING, which takes place 20 years earlier, is about that older brother discovering his love of music and buying his first record. The film is intended to feel like an extended flashback.
One of the most interesting facts about SWEET NOTHING is that we shot it entirely on my Canon 5d Mark ii Digital SLR. For those of you who don’t know what this means, the 5d is a small photo camera that has changed the world of independent film and certainly reinvigorated us. It looks like this…
…and shoots HD images like you wouldn’t believe. I will be writing a long post about the camera and our experience with it soon. In the meantime, I’d like to give a special thanks to our wonderful cast and crew, and to the parents of Evan, Dominic, and Tristan who play the three leads in the film.
Without further ado, may I present to you SWEET NOTHING! (Be sure to click the fullscreen button in the bottom right corner of the player.)
I hope you enjoyed it and are ready for more in the form of a feature film! :)
-blake
Filed under: Combat Rock, Music, Photos, Screenwriting, Skylark, Sweet Nothing, Video
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
The amazing Alan Poon became a New Yorker in a puff of smoke last spring, and today he will hop on his winged moose and head back to Canada. His name is all over this blog, and for good reason. Not only is he an amazing filmmaker, but he is one of my dearest friends.
Alan and I were freshman roommates at York University in 1997. One year later, he transferred to Ryerson, but those nine months we shared in the same dry prison (dormitory) solidified our friendship. He went on to become a Cinematographer and Director who has collaborated with Keith and I on our last three films. Most recently, he was the Director of Photography on our short film COMBAT ROCK, and is now helping us finish our screenplay for THE SKYLARK, which he will also shoot.
Last year, Alan directed a music video for The Bowerbirds, which was honored by Spin Magazine as one of the top 20 videos of the year. I could go on and on about Alan’s work, but I’ll let it speak for itself.
I’m also excited to share that I have the inside scoop on Alan’s newest project. He’s in mid-production on a stop-motion music video for the song “Marching Through Your Head” by Zeus , which he is co-directing with photographer and miniature-set-builder, Adam Makarenko. Here are some never-before-seen photos from this amazing project.
More on this video to come, so stay tuned.
Alan Poon, coming to a city near you… if you live in Ontario. 
-blake
Blake and I were feeling drained and beginning to doubt our work as we approached the tail end of another two-day, twenty-hour writing session yesterday when we received this message by an industry professional who was asked to critique our short film, COMBAT ROCK:
“This magnificent coming of age tale is an American original. Nostalgic, yes! Entertaining, yes! Pop Art, yes! But here’s a film where every element comes together and soars with a vibrant, new emotional basis. This film’s artistry is based in its uncanny ability to sustain itself just outside the knowable “drama” at the film’s heart (the passing of the mother character). So by not focusing on this “drama” or a knowable trajectory, the film not only stays well away from becoming an average coming of age tale and avoids what could transform itself into simplistic “melodrama”. What COMBAT ROCK eventually establishes itself as is a film with a whole world of original ideas about life, growing up and provides us with a glimpse of the way huge life changes mysteriously come into our lives when we are too pre-occupied with little obsessions to understand or even see their importance. This is a beautifully shot, edited, acted film with a strangely (and memorable) emotional dexterity about it. Bravo!”
Needless to say, we were overwhelmed and instantly re-energized. This came to us when we really needed it. I should add that the author of this review has been kept anonymous to Blake and I because he or she is part of a panel of judges at a competition. Well, whoever you are, thank you for your kind words. There’s much more to come!
-keith
Filed under: Combat Rock, Photos, Video | Tags: Alan Poon, Blake Hamilton, Damian Ziemkowski, Keith Hamilton
While Keith and I wait impatiently to release our new short film COMBAT ROCK later this month, we decided to post some other goodies.
UNFURL was my thesis film at York University in 2001. It holds a special place in my heart as it marks my first collaboration with Keith (he starred in the film and helped with rewrites) and my good friend Alan Poon (Cinematographer Extraordinaire and former Cleveland Brown). The film was also produced by David Hayman, who later served as the Music Supervisor on COMBAT ROCK, courtesy of Vapor Music Group in Toronto.
Here is the trailer for UNFURL (music by Arvo Part):
In addition to posting COMBAT ROCK in its entirety, we will soon discuss the process of making the film. But what is COMBAT ROCK about you ask? Without giving too much away, it’s a companion piece to THE SKYLARK. In the short film, we go back in time and tell the story of our main characters buying their first record as children. So it’s basically what The Muppet Babies was to The Muppets Take Manhattan, except with a little more melancholy and a lot more awesome music (The Velvet Underground, The Clash, and more). Here are some frame grabs:
More on COMBAT ROCK to come…
- blake
