Porfolio Paper 1 Revised

(1) Hella World!

Living in Los Angeles it is impossible to avoid the city’s symbiotic relationship with Hollywood. As a young Hollywoodent I lived in a town where confederate flags still fly from the back of lifted pick-up trucks. Now I study in the country’s most illustrious film program and rather than lube me up for the thrill ride that is Tinsel Town it has instead led me to develop a serious distaste for the hyperpackaged crap-fests that Hollywood has grown content with serving up. They are “ignorizing” the masses and rather than commit myself to that world, I plan to investigate possibilities for creative minds wishing to work in film or video outside of the typical industry path.

With the digital revolution in full swing, filmmakers are no longer required to be slaves to the whims of a studio producer. Sites like Youtube and Revver provide excellent forums for the up and comings who have nothing save dreams and webcams. And what with internet piracy at an all time high, people from all walks of life can steal their favorite animation program and produce works of art instantaneously downloadable anywhere across the world. Systems of copyright are undergoing serious reformation as the lines between content consumer and content provider grow thinner and thinner.

Filmmaker and theorist Julio Garcia Espinosa called this shift of power mass cinema, or imperfect cinema. A movement where access to basic equipment is common to society and every inspiration can be followed through. Eventually this will lead to a general understanding of the film making process and the manipulation inherent to cinema will be exposed. On-the-rise generations are filtering art in a whole new way and it is important that we acknowledge these fundamental changes occurring.

Gallery works, concert animations, nomadic film making are just a few examples of the ideas I will explore and there’s no doubt that looking into these worlds will lead me to additional stories, interesting and unique, which I will gladly share with you. Expect artist profiles (or if I get really brave: interviews) from time to time. I can’t promise it will all be cinematic, as I’ve got some other ideas, so here’s hoping that I’m a person with interesting things to say and that you may want to take the time to read them.

“Damn the man, save the empire”

end.

(2) Blood Sweat and Tedium, Tedium, Tedium

“Blog Review:

The full title is: Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer. So this is to be a blog about a hard working, crying, boring, juicer.

Got it?” Hollywoodent Post 2

Blog Re-Review: The full title is Blood, Sweat, and Tedium, Tedium, Tedium and it is dripping with an irreverent sarcasm typical of the chestfeather puffing amateur. Lungs of hot air, I confused entertainment and quality. I let my likes and dislikes eclipse my goal and posted a scathing ‘review’ steeped in personal preference, objectivity on the shelf.

That was the old Hollywoodent. I’m 21 now and adulthood has changed me.

With that said, I’d like to take this time to re-review Michael Taylor’s blog Blood, Sweat, and Tedium: Confessions of a Hollywood Juicer.

On my mark.

Mark.

Michael Taylor’s blog doesn’t have much in the way of juice, figurative nor literal, but Michael Taylor does. He makes it clear that he is not here to dish the juicy Hollywood details that readers have come to love (or loathe). But rather he chooses to focus on the dirty side of an ugly industry in a nasty city: set lighting.

He’s got lights to hang, lights to power, lights to focus, bbq lights, lights scampi…

Taylor’s a Hollywood insider in the purest form. He’s been working in the biz for 30! plus years and if the header of his page doesn’t turn your collar blue, you’re from the moon.

Often times reading Taylor’s posts is like reading letters from the trenches, only you’ve never met this soldier before, but the letters pour in. His writing is steady and honest, insightful and yes even at times tedious but this is his job and this is his life.

Michael’s first post is titled Welcome to the Dream Factory and in it he proves his talent as a writer and a philosopher. Here he laments his West Coast American Dream; it began in San Fransisco, paused for the ponderous central state mountains, and found “fulfillment” at last in the City of Angels.

“There are three kinds of people who come to Hollywood: dreamers, drifters, and the driven. Each has his/her own reasons for coming to Tinsel Town, the Dream Factory, and in the end, every path followed or blazed has a way of ending in a complex stew of disappointment, regret, and resignation. Good times are here to be had, careers and money to be made, but nothing good seems to last very long on this thin strip of sun-baked earth trapped hard between the desert and the sea. Time passes in a blur, melting into the haze of smog under the relentless Southern California sun. Then one day you wake up to find thirty years have slipped through your fingers, and where the hell did they go… “

Taylor’s observations are mindful and tragic; a writer gracefully acquiescing to this, his American Life. He speaks at length of “surviving” in the industry and, while never openly admitting to liking LA, he is seemingly content that it has “seeped into his system”.

::cough::smog::cough::

I couldn’t help but be a little put off by many of Taylor’s talks about idealism and compromise, the latter which played a big role in his career. At this point I am unable to stomach making any concessions for a town draped in 5 million dollar tinsel without a penny in its moral piggy bank.

“So get out.”

I will, but I’m taking you with me.

end.

P.S. Michael responded to my post, honorably defending his honor, and teaching me a lesson or two.

Here are two.

(1) There’s no such thing as “scenic lighting” – it’s called “set lighting” whether on a sound stage or location set. Set painters are sometimes called “scenics,” but I haven’t come across that word used in any other way.

(2) The hardest thing to learn at your age is patience. I know this probably sounds ridiculous (as it did to me, once), but if you keep moving in the right direction, putting one foot in front of the other while keeping your eyes open for opportunity — good things will happen. Just remember, it always takes longer than you want or think it should. Always.

Thanks, Michael.

End. End.

(3) Bankin’ On It
I want to read about movies, but I hate industry gossip. I’d enjoy interesting updates about the cinematic sphere, but I’m not willing to be a “mailing list consumer”.

I found a place.

Burbanked .com sounds like the brain child of a wears-a-suit to work (bank?) kinda guy, smart enough to get his day’s work done by lunchtime and spend the next 5 hours working on his blog.

Let’s see. Top toolbar. From the left. Home. About.

Click

“Burbanked is my blog. I’m Alan Lopuszynski, a copywriter, former Hollywood D-guy and corporate drone based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

Heh.

Burbanked (Bb) centers on making the fool of Hollywood and Lopuszynski (Alan) certainly pulls no punches. The graphic heading the site is a sign

Ironic, since Burbank is just next door (19 miles or about 21 minutes) to the Hollywood Sign and our writer lives in Pittsburgh. Perhaps Pittsburg has a ‘burb called Burbanked?

It doesn’t.

It does however have a little blurb of description about Bb on Pittsburgh bloggers, a site functioning as a directory for local bloggers.

“Burbanked is your home away from Hollywood hype. Show business is brimming with hype, spin and even hoopla. Burbanked is a frank, regular-guy look at movies, celebrities, TV - and the culture that inspires them. A view of Hollywood without the view. “

A less snarky, more accurate, description of this blog. Alan doesn’t present himself as any sort of pretentious critic. In fact he doesn’t give film reviews at all. Rather he is just an Average Joe who knows better than the people calling the shots and whose only power to change things lies his production of this site. The weapon he wields is common sense, something the “other team” is missing, and although he is a smarty-pants, Alan takes care never to patronize or pander (that’s the job of 20th Century Fox. see: Meet the Spartans)

Alan speaks in a direct tone, careful not to insult his audience’s intelligence. In this “about” section he is Alan the professional. Alan the suit-wearing banker (he claims he’s a copywriter, but I doubt it). He is cordial and accommodating, offering to email help to any browsers who “get lost” (undoubtedly these people have difficultly with their email, too).

But it’s the actual blog posts are where Alan trades in his abacus for something less mathy and starts to rag (maybe he trades his abacus for a rag) on Hollywood and the people who like it. Strait as an arrow he calls out H.Wood on all its B.S., something he is certainly qualified to assess having spent nearly a decade as a development lackey. He addresses multi-million dollar mistakes (see: Death Proof> ) as if the tragedy of their creation were common knowledge, which to his readers it is. Simple and sarcastic. He refrains from using fragments or colloquialisms, sticking with the correct version of the English language. Obviously knowledgeable of film language, smatterings of biz speech can be found throughout, but he mashes together his own cleverer than that phrases to keep the sincerity low. There are no asides or interjections as all of the blogs incorporate his character as the commenter. In the aforementioned post he knocks peace supporting grease ball Quentin Tarantino
not because he made a film that he didn’t care for, but because he made a film that simply doesn’t make sense assuming you trust a director to have any artistic consistency within a single work. The critique is mildly scathing but assuredly truthful. This is a conversation I imagine Mr. Burbanked would love to have face to face with that face
or that one.
He wouldn’t be intimidated, there’s no reason. He’s right.

Continuing through the tabs. Left to right. Assumable order of importance.

• Home
• About(where he shamelessly posts his resume for any job potentials or possible Lopuszynski die-hards)
• ContactI can’t find any reason to contact him just yet (I don’t seem to be the only one).
• Cinema Flashbacks(I’m still not entirely sure of the overall function)
• IF…(list of ideas that have no real context other than that he thought them. and they’re clever)
• The Burbanked Basics

(Aha!)

Methinks some basics are in order. So we’ll skip all that middle stuff and head to Burbanked Basics where he breaks down the site and all its quirks.

If you haven’t, out of curiosity, clicked any of the above links to his site and noticed how chock-full of stuff the home page is, do so now. You’ll be confused, for every which way you look numerous widgets with continuously changing content bludgeon your peripherals with quippy info. A quick breakdown:

• Featured Article (self explanatory)
• Action Figure Mood Indicatory (star quotes from action figure versions of stars)
• Flickers (Newsiest news)
• Randomly Burbanked (haphazard links to his former posts)
• From the Brains of other Bloggers (links to other blogs of similar subject matter)
• Terrible Twos (indicative of a tantrum)

Each time I visit the site I have to brush up on the basics because all those little boxes have a tendency to overwhelm. IMO the box of highest function is From the Brains of Other Bloggers. Not only are there links to company he keeps such as the insightful Antagony & Ecstasy or the blatant contradiction that is What Would Tyler Durden Do? (it’s all gossip about celebs. I prefer to think he’d set them on fire) Mr. Burbanked actually takes the time to post his responses to some of his favorite posts. This solidifies him a genuine blogger who understands the nature of the conversation being had.

He’s a smart guy who longs for a more peaceful age, where things didn’t suck as much.
The outer limits anarchist who knows his ideas are innovative and humorous and rests quietly on those laurels.

“News, insight and snark from a former Hollywood insider” he says.

Bitter? Perhaps. But never regretful of getting the hell out.