The Forest Is Red - Official Website Up!

The official website for "The Forest Is Red" is now up. Take a look!

www.theforestisred.com

The Forest Is Red Wins Best Feature Film at the European Independent Film Festival in Paris

The Forest Is Red screened in Paris a couple of weeks ago at a wonderful film festival in Paris called the European Independent Film Festival. The event, organized by Scott Hillier and an obviously excellent crew of passionate individuals had "well made, high-end indie" written all over it, the sort of spirit that I love in filmmaking.

The American New Wave - A Filmmaking Manifesto

The American New Wave

A Filmmaking Manifesto

Shooting handheld is no way to start a revolution.    

Certainly not now, 52 years after the French New Wave blasted into life with “The 400 Blows,” in which director Francois Truffaut introduced a new cinematic language that he subsequently developed, along with Jean-Luc Godard and other filmmakers, into a maze of mysterious roads, leading audiences seductively to some unknown, artistic conclusion that can only be arrived at after a lifetime of consuming exciting, fascinating, demanding art.

In the ’60s, shooting handheld was a middle finger aimed at the studio system. Shooting in the streets with small budgets and small crews was telling the establishment, “We are no longer interested in this benign entertainment you have created for us. We wish to make something better, something exciting that touches, challenges, and twists your soul, something you can understand and also not understand, something you can’t explain easily but that makes you smile, something that leaves you melancholy but inspired—something better!”

TRAILER! The Forest Is Red

Hello everyone,

This is the trailer for my new film, "The Forest Is Red." I just locked picture on the film a few weeks ago, and next week we are finally starting post sound! Which means that in about two months, the movie will be completed, which I am very, very excited about. Excited because I get to move on with my life, excited because I can stop pouring every cent I make into the movie, but mostly because I can start taking this thing to festivals and to see what the movie can mean for my career and the career of all the others who have done good work on it.

Anyway, here's the trailer. Enjoy!


Trailer: "The Forest Is Red" from David J on Vimeo.

The Forest Is Red - The Camerawork Approach

David Jakubovic and Devin Harjes on set. A doorway AND a lens flare. ©2010 The Forest Is Red

 
Now that we wrapped our 22-day shoot of "The Forest Is Red," I have time to recollect some impressions I've had, lessons I've learned, and anecdotes I've accumulated during this production of a very low budget feature film.

The Forest Is Red - First Four Days Of Our Film Shoot

Jam in the big city. From "The Forest Is Red"

Yesterday we shot our fourth day of principle photography on "The Forest Is Red." Immediately when we began on the first day, the buildup of stress and anxiety in my stomach from the weeks leading up to the shoot evaporated and was replaced with the simple enjoyment, thought, and fair amount of work associated with any filmmaking experience.

Shuo Zhang and David Jakubovic.
©2010 "The Forest Is Red.' Photo by John Schmidt

Shooting a low budget, independent feature film is similar in some ways to shooting a properly budgeted, bigger studio film. Mainly in that you wake up in the morning, shoot some scenes, go and watch the footage, have a beer with the cast and crew and go to bed. The main difference is that the table at the bar is significantly smaller when you're shooting a low budget indie. But while the crew is small, the ultimate images are the same size on a low or a big budget film, which simply means, I guess, that they needs to look as good as possible. In the planning phase prior to shooting, I knew that the small (and therefore less costly) size of the crew allowed me to comfortably add a few days to the shooting schedule in order to have a bit more time to shoot each scene, and this has been useful: we are able to spend time getting each shot right.

The Filming Begins Tomorrow. Holy Crap.

"The Forest Is Red" photo by John Schmidt ©2010

Tomorrow we begin shooting "The Forest Is Red." A 22-day shoot. I've edited films in the past where I was on location for five weeks, and one that filmed for eight weeks, and I've always found the constant flow of dailies amazing - "do they never take a break???" is what the brain automatically asks and of course - it's only natural to wonder about that when you are getting tons of scenes delivered to the cutting room at a pace that often feels like a series of real life jump-cuts.