In LA

A still of Her Royal Highness Teri Garr¹ from the fantastic film Young Frankenstein

There’s a question that often pops up when people are trying to suss out another person’s interests, ideals, knowledge of history, etc. Something along the lines of “Who are the five world figures, living or dead, with whom you’d most like to sit down and have a conversation over a tray of spam musubi?” I swear every answer to that question I’ve heard from a well-meaning white person includes Nelson Mandela and/or Ghandi. I mean no disrespect to either of those esteemed gentlemen, but with one refreshingly candid interview Teri Garr has knocked them both off of my list.²

An excerpt related to Young Frankenstein:

…it was like when the teacher says to stop laughing, and all you can do is laugh more. Mel would say, “Can we do another take with no laughing?” And we’d say, “We’ll try.” We would laugh at everything. Marty Feldman–God, was he funny. When I went to see the show in New York, I went backstage, and I said, “You’re all doomed.” Because everyone is dead from that movie! Well, not everyone. But Madeline, and Peter Boyle, and Marty. And myself, I have one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel.

She’s recently written an autobiography, entitled Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood³. I plan to check it out.

Technorati Tags: acting, entertainment, film, hollywood, Teri Garr

1. She has multiple sclerosis, and has said she now hates the letters M and S, “and I certainly took the Ms. off the front of my name. I now go as your Royal Highness Teri Garr.” [↩]
2. Honestly, what question have those two figures not already been asked while they shared spam musubi with Abraham Lincoln, the Dalai Lama, Jesus, and Floyd from accounting? [↩]
3. Apparently she wanted to title the book “Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat?” but was dissuaded by the publisher. [↩]

I’m a little behind the times –you’ve all probably seen this already, but I really appreciated this music video. Please note before clicking: as far as music videos go, this one’s on the more violent and disturbing end of the spectrum. And if the imagery doesn’t disturb, you may not find the music easy on the ears, especially if you’re not already keen on the less accessible tracks from France’s Ed Banger Records.

The iconic jackets, the pseudo-documentary feel, the match between the relentless nature of the music and imagery, and the Clockwork-Orange-esque synth notes at the end that may have been the inspiration for the entire video –all resonate for me. It reminds me of the film Man Bites Dog but with no attempt at intelligence, irony, or a point. Just a straightforward and effective cinematic and emotional experience.

There’s a pretty amusing parody of the video available here.

I don’t think the press usually focuses on teaser trailers¹ for films whose release dates are months away, but the teaser for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has gotten some published love from Patrick Goldstein² of the Los Angeles Times:

The film is due in December and has already been touted for Oscarhood. Now that Paramount has put up its first trailer–download it here–I have no quarrel with any grand predictions

The teaser has only been in circulation for a few weeks (it first appeared prepended to prints of the new Indiana Jones film), but it is unusually beautiful and moody. I’m happy that people are now getting a glimpse of the film.

1. a teaser trailer is a very early advertisement for a film, usually shorter and less expository than the trailers that screen closer to a film’s release date [↩]
2. it’s not just on the net, his screed is printed front and center in the Entertainment section of today’s LA Times [↩]

Some of my friends and relatives don’t yet know that I’ve moved back to the U.S. A quick update on my life is in order:

1. I moved to Beijing, China in March of 2007
2. While in China I did a number of things:
   1. Studied Mandarin Chinese
   2. Met a lot of very cool Chinese people (我很想你们, 我有机会的时候我应该要去中国访问你们).
   3. Worked on the first NBA produced Chinese television show (”NBA制造”, a sly title meaning “made in NBA”). Edited the initial promotional materials for the show and about half of the pilot episode.
   4. Worked on the film The Children of Huang Shi (黄石的孩子) in an IT role likely unique to productions in China, facilitating the lines of communication and data between the director and producers in China and the editors in Australia –not an easy task given China’s internet censorship and general network instability. While working on that film in a little town named Hengdian, I met a director, producer, and postproduction supervisor who were doing preproduction work on “The Forbidden Kingdom”. This led directly to my subsequent job.
   5. Worked on the film The Forbidden Kingdom (功夫之王) as second assistant editor. We built our editing suites into a room in the not-too-luxurious Yingdu Hotel in Hengdian (横店).
   6. After four months of work in Hengdian, shooting of The Forbidden Kingdom ended. Last September I and the other members of the editorial department were sent to Los Angeles to continue editing the film.
3. Editorial began working on the director’s cut of the film over in Studio City. Initially I was to be sent back to Beijing (to continue working on the film there) after one month, but one month in LA became two, then four, and then they ended up keeping me in LA for the duration. Somewhere in the middle of those 6 months of work in LA, I decided I might as well consider the U.S.A. my home base again.
4. I’m now finished with The Forbidden Kingdom and have gone on to a new job in the editorial department of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I’m living in Studio City, not far from Universal Studios.

In this example, column G is determining a timecode value, 10:45:46:2 based on the frame number in B, 0929906. That timecode value should end in :02, and will once I figure a good way to add leading zeros in an Excel formula.

The other day I was presented with an Excel spreadsheet listing a bunch of clips by frame number, and I needed to find the scene and shot numbers for each clip from an EDL¹ which listed the clips by timecode.

Rather than spend a lot of time with a timecode calculator converting each frame number to 24fps non-drop SMPTE timecode, I came up with a formula that would automatically generate and display the timecode for a given frame number. I didn’t spend the time to figure out how to coerce excel into adding leading zeros where necessary, so it doesn’t always generate timecodes that are formatted properly, but it was good enough for my purposes. I’m posting the formula here in case any other filmmakers find it useful, and if you happen to know how to modify this formula so that it does add leading zeros, please consider posting your code as a comment here. We’re all in this together. On that note, on to the formula.

For a given frame number in column 2, row B, the following formula will convert that frame number to timecode (24p, ND):

CONCATENATE( ROUNDDOWN(B2/86400,0),":", ROUNDDOWN(MOD(B2,86400)/1440,0), ":", ROUNDDOWN(MOD(MOD(B2,86400),1440)/24,0), ":", MOD(MOD(B2,1440),24))

–Update: A tip from Ken Case led to the solution. The finished formula, which produces properly formatted smpte 24p non-drop timecodes, is the following:

CONCATENATE( TEXT(ROUNDDOWN(B2/86400,0),"00"),":", TEXT(ROUNDDOWN(MOD(B2,86400)/1440,0),"00"), ":", TEXT(ROUNDDOWN(MOD(MOD(B2,86400),1440)/24,0),"00"), ":", TEXT(MOD(MOD(B2,1440),24),"00"))

1. acronym for Edit Decision List [↩]

At the extremes, those who think online filesharing helps artists¹ may see this story as logical and evidence for their beliefs, and those who assume illegal downloads of movies and music always hurts content creators may see this as a joke (funny or not), but I think it’s pretty cool that a little independent film has generated a lot of positive buzz through word-of-mouth reviews from people who illegally downloaded the film –and the producer of The Man From Earth has officially thanked these movie “pirates”. To wit:

“Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. Most of the feedback from everyone who has downloaded “The Man From Earth” has been overwhelmingly positive. People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!”

All’s well that ends well.

Technorati Tags: film

1. I know I’ve discovered more artists and purchased more music due to the existence of p2p technologies, from napster to gnutella. [↩]

There’s a video up on one of China’s youtube clones of a Chinese TV broadcast, which features footage of actress Li Bing Bing re-recording some lines of dialogue in a session with director Rob Minkoff and ADR Editor Chris Sheldon. It’s over here.

There’s a great new trailer online for The Forbidden Kingdom, and it’s awesome. It is available as flash video embedded within a page and also available in HD Quicktime. To see it, go to Yahoo’s “The Forbidden Kingdom” page, look for the “Exclusive Trailer”, and click the button for the resolution of your choice (the 1080p version looks amazing, but if you don’t have the fastest computer or net connection I’d recommend the 720p), or click the “Click to play” button to see a reasonably ok looking embedded flash version (looks better than the trailer on youtube, but much worse than the HD QuickTimes).

Unlike the “Teaser Trailer”, this trailer concerns itself less with introducing the story and is more focused on imparting the feel of the film. There are tons of beautiful shots of scenery, action, Jackie Chan fighting Jet Li, Li Bing Bing being all hot and evil, Collin Chou looking devious, and Michael Angarano getting beaten up by just about everyone. In my opinion it’s more exciting than the teaser trailer, and given the amount of action in the film, a better representation of the film as well.

Yahoo’s “The Forbidden Kingdom” page also includes a countdown clock to the release date of the film. Right now it says 65 days, 21 hours, 15 minutes, and 55 seconds to go. Aiiiyaa!¹ How freaky to actually see how little time is left until release. I’m going to see that countdown clock in my fitful sleep tonight².

1. that’s Mandarin for “oy vey” [↩]
2. unless I can manage to disable my brain’s javascript interpreter [↩]

The video quality on youtube sucks, so I’m pleased that there’s now a much better quality version of that first trailer for The Forbidden Kingdom available on Apple’s trailer site.

If you’re hoping for a trailer with more Jackie and Jet, be patient and fear not.

The Jackie Chan and Jet Li film I’ve been working on for the past eight months in China and Los Angeles, The Forbidden Kingdom (Chinese title: 功夫之王), is nearing completion. A couple of months ago, some very pretty footage from the film first appeared on the internet. Now the first actual trailer¹ has surfaced. Enjoy:

Technorati Tags: Chinese, entertainment, film, Hengdian, Panavision Genesis

1. a trailer is an advertisement for an upcoming film [↩]