I have four tattoos. My first came in a series of dots, placed with precision, around my lungs and spleen when I was 18. I had just completed six months of chemotherapy and was about to begin two months of radiation treatment for Hodgkin’s Disease (Cancer of the lymph nodes). These dots would perfectly align my body on the table so that the sick areas were treated while minimizing the sacrifice of healthy cells.
After my treatments were over I was in remission. I had been poked and prodded so many times by nurses and doctors that I decided I wanted to put something on my body that had meaning and beauty, and I wanted it to be something I chose. I’d get a tattoo. I told my mother my plans and she replied, “If you still want it when you’re 21, I’ll pay for it”. 3 years later I was ready.
I have always loved martial arts, specifically Bruce and Brandon Lee. Their young and tragic deaths resonated with me and I specifically loved the film, THE CROW (A story about a man who cheats death and exacts revenge on the people who brutally murdered him and his young wife). I felt I had just cheated death. I knew I wanted a crow but none of the images from the film seemed cool enough. A couple of days before my appointment with the tattoo artist I went to see the sequel to THE CROW. A terrible movie, but the villian was played by IGGY POP. He had a huge tattoo on his chest depicting two demons fighting each other and their outlines formed a crow. I loved it. It became my first tattoo, well, second if you count the radiation dots.
While in the hospital for complications from one of my chemo treatments I met a boy named Kipp who had Leukemia. He was only a year younger than me (17). We were the only patients under 60 on the whole floor and we bonded immediately. There was something angelic about him, and although we only spent a few days together we kept in touch after I was released. A year later he passed away.
While in the hospital, Kipp created a series of drawings featuring a character called Pipeman. Pipeman was a sort of alter ego who traveled to far away lands; a way for Kipp to escape. When I attended a special memorial service for Kipp at his High School, his mom gave me copies of the drawings. My favorite was PIPEMAN ON THE MOON. It became my third tattoo and I would eventually write and produce a full length play by the same name, based on my experiences with Kipp.
In our script, THE SKYLARK, there’s a key scene in which Micah, our main character, follows his muse through Central Park and she leads him to STRAWBERRY FIELDS, John Lennon’s memorial. Blake and I also shot our interview for THE ULTIMATE FILMMAKER COMPETITION in and around there. We’ve worked on this script for about four years now and I feel it’s very much a part of me, hence my fourth tattoo: the Imagine symbol at Strawberry Fields, but instead of the word IMAGINE in the center, I added a skylark. I fucking love this tattoo and it’s healing as I write this. It is an indelible promise to myself to make our film.
-keith
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: Uncategorized
When The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition asked us to start a Twitter account, I thought I’d need therapy. The good people at The Filmmaker’s Alliance explained, “it’s one of those things that every filmmaker should be doing for self promotion and building your audience”. Well now that Keith and I are on Twitter (follow us here), I can definitely see the value of this 140-character medium, mostly because I discovered my old friend and collaborator Dave Hayman’s feed.
Dave produced my two most important student films, Becoming Mighty and Unfurl, before transitioning into Music Supervision at Vapor Music. It was eight long years before we worked together again, but he was in the perfect position to help us acquire the music for COMBAT ROCK. Dave was always a music fanatic, obsessed with Neil Young and The Tragically Hip as I remember, and now his Twitter feed is one of the best sources of new music I’ve found. He has almost 2000 followers already. We’ve embedded his feed along with ours on the left side of this site, and you can follow him here.
Here is the trailer for my first collaboration with Dave in 2000.
We look forward to collaborating with Mr. Hayman on our first feature film, THE SKYLARK!
- blake
One of our favorite albums from 2006 is Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther. I was thrilled to hear that they finally announced a release date for their follow-up album and tour. Here’s a snippet from an interview last year with Stereogum.
“We didn’t know exactly what we wanted, but we know we didn’t want to make the same album as last time. We could have made 10 albums with the amount of time we’ve spent, but that doesn’t mean they’d be saying anything great,” says McKenzie Smith.
So, what sort of music can you expect from a Midlake record? Perhaps the new album cover will give you a hint.
Midlake’s last album was, for lack of a better term, Classic Rock Revival at its best. Their lead singer Tim Smith, says he was listening to a lot of Neil Young, America, Joni Mitchell, and Fleetwood Mac while he wrote it. Here’s an interesting quote I found of Tim’s, this one from early in the band’s career.
“We don’t want to get called a Radiohead rip-off band. I think Radiohead is a lot closer to my natural tendencies as a songwriter than a band like, um, Jethro Tull. I listen to way more Jethro Tull than I do Radiohead these days, but I could write 10 Radiohead songs before I could write one Jethro Tull song. I want to sound more like Jethro Tull, but I just can’t. That’s a big struggle.”
I doubt anyone but Radiohead can write 10 Radiohead songs, but I’ll give Tim the benefit of the doubt. If any of Midlake’s influences peak your interest, check out this music video for one of my favorite songs off their last album.
While surfing the internet today, I also stumbled across this low-fi EPK (Electronic Press Kit). It was especially cool to find because Keith and I wrote an EPK into THE SKYLARK to establish our fictional band of the same name. We use it as a storytelling device similar to the newsreel in Citizen Kane or Pixar’s UP. (That’s right, I just compared our film to Citizen Kane and Up.)
There’s some inspiring reference material in here, but be patient; there’s a 30 second countdown at the top.
Midlake’s The Courage of Others will be released February 2, 2010. I’m ready.
-blake
