Screenwriting « The Skylark

Watch Sweet Nothing in HD! by blakehamilton

January 6, 2010, 7:41 pm
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

2 Comments

VOTE! by blakehamilton

January 3, 2010, 12:59 pm
Filed under: Screenwriting, Skylark, Sweet Nothing

Here’s one election that doesn’t involve punditry, lobbying, or picking a party: The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition is ready for you to help choose their winner! They explain on their site, better than we can, the importance of this competition, so please go to www.ultimatefilmmakercompetition.com now and vote! Then tell all your friends to vote, and tell them to tell their friends.

Our film THE SKYLARK is listed under KEITH AND BLAKE HAMILTON. Click on our names and you’ll find an interview with us, our bio, and a sample of our work including SWEET NOTHING in its entirety! And as promised, keep checking back here for out-takes from our interview.

Thanks for sticking with us. The time has come!

-blake and keith

2 Comments

Film Update #4 – Sweet Nothing! by blakehamilton

December 15, 2009, 6:51 pm
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

1 Comment

First ‘Combat Rock’ Review by keith99h

November 19, 2009, 7:58 pm
Filed under: Combat Rock, Screenwriting, Skylark

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

2 Comments

Oh! Sweet Collaboration by keith99h

November 7, 2009, 6:17 pm
Filed under: Music, Screenwriting, Skylark, Video

Well, we finished our two-day writing extravaganza and Blake and I think it went pretty well. We ended up working for about twenty hours in two days. Needless to say our brains are a little fried. We rewrote all of act one and started to break down act two. There’s still a lot to do before our deadline, but Blake and I are confident we’ll have something special by then.

I’d like to give a shout out again to the amazing Alan Poon for giving us a hand both days (day 1 in person, day 2 via speakerphone.) We’re slowly building a collective of young and talented artists, which is very exciting for us.

To celebrate, here are two videos by another collective, Broken Social Scene. They’ve been around for a little while, but they remain one of my favorite bands. Most of their members are in other bands and this group is like a revolving door for talent. I’ve seen them several times and it’s always exciting to see who’s going to show up. Oh, sweet collaboration!