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The Ethiopian American Reviews 13 Months of Sunshine

jelewis8 — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 03:59:28 +0000

Check out the Ethiopian American’s review of 13 Months of Sunshine. Some key quotes:
“The American dream is like beauty – it’s in the eye of the beholder. For coffee barista Solomon, his American dream is the opening of one day his own coffee shop in Los Angeles’ Little Ethiopia. For Hanna, a recent Ethiopian immigrant to Los Angeles, the American dream is represented in the ability to gain permanent residence status in the US and attain higher education. The two dreams collide in “13th Month of Sunshine” in more ways than one to create a beautiful film about the pursuit of happiness and dreams in a uniquely Ethiopian way in Los Angeles.
This is a beautiful film, beautifully shot and directed. There is no doubt that Yehdego’s Thirteen Months of Sunshine has set a new standard for Ethiopian films made in the US.”
Nice to see reviews like this rolling in.

13 Months Screening In DC

jelewis8 — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:00:33 +0000

The film I edited and am producing, entitled 13 Months of Sunshine, is screening in Washington DC Sunday, September 9 as part of the Ethiopian Millennium Celebration that’s happening all through the month of September.
Check out Helm Magazine’s write-up of the film and the event.

Official Movie Site
13 Months of Sunshine IMDB Profile

Blogging Sufferage

jelewis8 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:53:55 +0000

Blogging ain’t what it used to be. Or more accurately, I’m not what I used to be. Blogging has become, unfortunately, a leisure I no longer have time to afford, though that will hopefully be changing over the next month or so. Due to the time constraints, I’ve had virtually no time to do any writing at all, and the end result has been that Fringe has suffered.
I trust all twenty of my regular visitors will understand.
For now, I’ll be recycling some old posts, some doozies and quality entries from my heyday of prolific blogging about writing, writing about blogging, and everything mundane and trivial in between. Hopefully, as things lighten up for me, I’ll begin to add more original stuff again. I beg your indulgence in the interim.
Oh yes, a quick note about the film listed on the sidebar, 13 Months of Sunshine is screening in Washington DC as part of the Ethiopian Millennium Celebration on September 9. I’ll be attending, along with my fellow producers. With the documentary footage we’re shooting, we hope to raise some eyebrows and interest from distributors. I’ll try and keep everyone updated on the film as it progresses to its final state and forward.

My First Meeting At Sony Studios

jelewis8 — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:10:30 +0000

I had my first meeting at Sony the other day. It was a typical lunch meeting in the sense that not a lot was discussed about specific projects, but under the surface, boiling like a cauldron, was a battlefield of wits and egos. And not like normal egos. I’m talking movie executive egos, which aren’t what you might expect. It’s all imparting of wisdom and advice. But there’s an undercurrent of disdain, or perhaps it’s just a disregard for youth and naivete. But it comes out almost fatherly; a gentle hand to the shoulder, stopping to swallow the bite in one’s mouth, and then putting down the fork to really emphasize that what one is about to say is really the be all end all of movie advice.
I found myself very appreciative and very resentful of it. It wasn’t that I didn’t think what was said wasn’t important or relevant. Indeed, it was entirely tailored to my current experiences on the indie feature 13 Months of Sunshine. How to broker a deal. Who to market the film to. What the post process should be. How to raise capital to finish the film. What the next step should be.
All great advice, all perfect for me. And I felt bothered by it. Well, bothered is too strong. I felt like I was enrolled in a community college course after receiving a Ph.D. My first thought was that all this was stuff I’d figured out on my own.
Ah, the folly of youth.
Without writing a Tolstoy length piece on what I was really feeling, I can boil much of what I felt to the following sense:
I’ve worked on this film for a year and a half, from editing to the ADR to effects to beginning the marketing of the film online. This guy has got great things to say, but they’re all studio-driven mentality thoughts, with imagined budgets and resources. He doesn’t understand where we’re coming from. He’s got a whole mindset that is, in many ways, foreign to how this film has developed and how I see it going. How could he possibly know that we have already begun the process of finding potential distributors, that we’re on the right track with our post production process? So why am I just the tiniest bit peeved at all this?
But I walked away with an offer to animate the man’s company logo (which was turned down later due to my cost estimate of the project), and I left him a letter, my business card, some loglines, and a copy of my short film.
Which has since resulted in an invitation to come back and pitch one of my favourite scripts, Riders to the Sea, which is an Irish period drama. And for someone not quite two years in Hollywood, I consider that a wonderful blessing and opportunity. I’ll let you know how badly I screw up the pitch.

This Horrible, Wonderful Birth

jelewis8 — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:22:33 +0000

You have no idea what it’s like to feel so close to a project’s completion, and yet still be so far away, unless you’ve worked on a project in which that scenario played out as described, in which case you could easily commiserate with my plight. Really though, it’s less of a plight and more of a great feeling that is perpetually in stasis. That is what 13 Months of Sunshine feels like. Tomorrow night should see the last of the actual editing in of previously unseen and unused footage. The plan is then to screen the full-blooded, two-hour uncut version to a select group of individuals who will hopefully be willing to part with much needed feedback on the project. Does it totally suck? If so, what can we do to change the suck to less suck, and even if it doesn’t suck, what can we do to make it cleaner, tighter, better? We hope to screen on Sunday evening, so the next few days will be the equivalent of the last thrilling hill on the world’s second best roller coaster.
Why second best? Because it’s still the rough cut.
So why the static nature of things? Because the film has only just begun to be. It’s in the just-post-fetus stage now, with awkward limbs, a giant head, and a strange cord that apparently has been keeping it alive inside this bizarre, warm, biodome of flesh, muscle, and fluid. Biology doesn’t get any more gross and disgustingly venal than the basic functions…birth, feeding, defecation, procreation, and death. This is not to denegrate the beauty of nature and love and humanity and all that. La dee dah, but let’s face it, when a child is born, it’s born amid a disgusting outflow of blood, piss, and fecal matter. The real miracle of birth is that we manage not to remember that fact until we’re watching our own kids popping out and then that awful, awful sight and smell…
But yeah, babies are beautiful and all that. Which is to say, this film has just popped out, as disgusting and horrible as its environment is, it’s purpose is to grow up, mature, become a man (or a woman, as the case may be–I’m an equal opportunity metaphorist). So we try to ignore the blood and shee-ite, but let’s face it, it’s hard to concentrate on the baby when the crap is literally hitting the fan. Why they have a fan in the delivery room is beyond me. Maybe the mother demanded it. ANYWAY.
So the baby’s out, it’s been swaddled. Now it’s time to raise it up right, the way mama and papa imagine. For our baby, this means sound. This is the equivalent of the first fifteen years of our child’s life. And while I consider most babies things to be feared and held at arms length (lest they find a way to be dropped on their bouncy little heads and forever leave me in a haze of guilt), I find teenagers almost more reprehensible. At least babies have no innate knowledge of being evil or annoying or just plain scary. But teens actively put metal in their face, listen to noise that can be used to encrypt CIA transmissions, and generally make their parents’ lives a living hell.
Not that I have any experience with this stuff. I was a good kid, a good teenager, and except for my silent but mostly non-threatening rebellious final two years of high school, I was a model child. But I’m really straying off the path here. And it was a pretty wide frickin’ path to begin with.
All I’m trying to say is, I’ve got a child to raise, and the prospect is frightening, yet joyous. Parents get what I’m talking about.

A Work In Progress

jelewis8 — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:52:10 +0000

As much as I’d like to tell you I’ve been hunting dinosaurs in a time-travelling adventure safari, or opening an ostrich ranch on the outskirts of Jackson, Wyoming, or even promoting a new line of products for PETA’s new angry women’s clear skin cosmetics without the use of animal fat department, I have actually been leading a rather sedate life of writing and editing, which is rather how I like it at the moment.
Work on 13 Months of Sunshine has ramped up since we made the decision to try and make Sundance. By make I mean “attempt not to get banned from every future festival due to an overwhelmingly negative response to the film.” Which means that much work remains to be done on it before it is ready to be consumed as an entertainment product. Editing still continues, but we’re nearing the end of the bulk of the scenes. Much of what’s left is montage or minor scenes that did not comprise entire tapes, so that work will be winding down somewhat within the next two weeks. We’ve started sound work, or will today. This is going to be the most arduous task, I fear, because so much of it will have to be replaced with dialogue recorded in a studio.
Then there is the score composition. People have expressed interest in working on the film, but so far no solid contacts. All in all, it’s going to be a rough two weeks ahead. We have until September 15 to get a rough cut completed and sent to the Sundance acceptance committee. It doesn’t have to have all the bells and whistles of a Frigidaire or anything, but it should at least resemble something close to a film type product. We aim high, we do.
My self-imposed August deadline approaches quickly for the completion of the second volume of The Cold Goodbye. Oh, I’ll finish it. I’ve been ramping up for the ending, building, building, building for so long it feels like now writing is so much easier. I think it’s the downward slide toward freedom. I’m trying not to let it suck. Naturally, once I finish it up and have some edits out of the way, I’ll be posting the new volume online for sale, as well as a brand new version of the entire two-volume set in one conveniently bound book. With new cover art, no less!
And finally, I recently completed a comedy script that I’m in edits on, trying to achieve Official Draft #3, which doesn’t sound all that impressive, but I’ve had a number of people read it so far who have liked it, thought it might be worth shopping around to agencies.
So many irons in the fire. Trying to keep this baby stoked. Good things are coming. But I apologize for the lack of updates the last two days. Computer problems and deadlines kept me at bay. At least that’s the current excuse. I’ll definitely have some good things for you next week, including hosting of the 52 Storyblogging Carnival, a new story, a review of the coffee trade documentary Black Gold, and wildly funny stories of my time with the Pygmies in the African Congo. Crazy stuff. Until then, have a great weekend.

13 Months of Sunshine Trailer

jelewis8 — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:54:39 +0000

The wait is over. I’m proud to offer you the trailer for 13 Months of Sunshine, the Ethiopian film I’ve been working on for about eight months. Everything in the trailer that you see was put together in just over a week, with pre-production and prep work to capture and collect necessary clips and talking over ideas with Bobby (director) taking place over a four day period. I edited the entire trailer on Saturday, with a fair amount of tweaking over the next two days, along with animation and graphics and colour correcting taking up the rest of the time. Finally, subtitles were added this evening, but even that took a tad longer because I had never used the subtitle software before.
This was a very fun, very difficult project, but one I’m pretty proud of, despite its deficiencies. The footage looks great, and the volume of material I had to work with was a boon, and Bobby pretty much gave me creative freedom, so I had a lot of room in the sandbox. There’s something to be said for creative constraints, but the technical challenges more than made up for the wide berth I was given in putting this together.
Depending on the response I receive from this, I may post details about the process of editing; how I went from a blank canvas to finished product, how I created the animated graphics, how colour correction really is the star of this entire thing, etc. Let me know if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Finally, please let me know what you think of the movie based on the trailer–is it something you’d be interested in seeing (and not just because someone you know is working on it!)? Please leave your comments. I really would appreciate your input.
View the slightly compressed Quicktime 6 version (19MB). It will load in a new browser window or tab.
Have a happy 4th. I’ll be posting something patriotic at some point, though if you’re reading my blog on your day off, you’ve got some serious problems. That, or you just really love me and can’t stand to miss me even for one day. And that is okay, my friends.

Trailer Park Denizen

jelewis8 — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:48:30 +0000

I’m on trailer duty for 13 Months of Sunshine, the Ethiopian film I’m editing. We’re actually much closer to a rough cut than I had suspected, though there’s still quite a bit of work ahead. Even though cutting this trailer is actually taking away from editing on the film itself, it’s to rekindle some excitement about the film, which has been over a year in the making, and also to possibly raise a few more funds to enable a couple of reshoots and perhaps start a campaign for distribution. The more I work on the film, the more I realize it’s a wise investment of my time, energy, and even resources on. I’ve doubled my involvement in the film to include “Visual Effects Coordinator” and the director has talked to me about giving me “Associate Producer” credit as well, which doesn’t really mean a whole heck of a lot in movie speak, but it is an indication of how expanded my role has become in a film that, eight months ago was only half-way shot. With all the capturing and logging as well as editing, I’ve taken the editing role to its full capacity, and I hope that will reap benefits down the road.
I’m confident that it will. The more I look at the film and see it coming together, the more pleased I am with its outcome. It’s been an especially long and arduous road for the director, who has put so much energy and time and his own money to complete the film. And the most positive aspect of this whole experience is the relationship with the director that I’ve come to really appreciate. Not only is he someone with a lot of drive and potential, but he’s great at some things that I will never be good at, like producing. It helps that nearly everything we’ve worked on thus far together has resulted in unanimous conclusions. If I think a scene needs X, Y, or Z, he agrees. Then he’ll point out something I’ll see things in a new light and we’ll be off and racing again. It’s been a great collaboration. We’ve begun some idea surfing for future projects, and I am confident that we will be working together for a long time.
At any rate, the trailer will hopefully be ready to go by Thursday. I’ll post it here whenever it is complete. It’s going to be quite a bit more polished and easier on the eyes than the first one–which wasn’t bad in terms of its look, but it was entirely too long. More to come…

Editing A Feature

jelewis8 — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 05:36:52 +0000

By the way, IE7 Beta sucks. Just the layout is enough to make me think that I’d be better off using a dead cat as a browser than this newest Microsoft incarnation of internet-based evil. I try to keep the geek factor down on Fringe, since not everyone who comes here is a committed desk jockey with a holster for Mountain Dew and a CSS handbook with quick draw handles. Sometimes I have to let it out though, like a giant airedale who is kept in a cage all day. Who let the dogs out? Consider me responsible today.
Today will be a short post, because I have about a thousand things to do that got the bump on the priority list. Things like capturing about 60 hours of footage for 13 Months of Sunshine, which has been on a lull because I ran out of hard drive space. Let’s hear it for editing from the raw stuff, not just the director’s picks of best shots. Editing the film has been interesting, not the least of which is the language barrier. Probably more frustrating, but only from a convenience standpoint, has been the lack of slates, which is the initial clapper at each take. It makes scene sorting a heck of a lot harder without slates, and organization is more important than ever with this much footage.
Normally a director will shoot hundreds of hours of footage for a feature. He will let a script supervisor know if he likes a particular take during shooting, and those takes are marked for use in editing. Sometimes those takes won’t work quite as well as hoped, but the process of editing the footage is made easier by that initial culling.
13 Months of Sunshine has yet to be filtered. So essentially I’m capturing every frame and then going through it with the director as we edit the day’s session. It’s more laborious than I’m used to, but only because I’ve never directed a feature. But, I also shoot at a smaller ratio, usually a 4:1 ratio, which means for a fifteen minute short, I shoot 60 minutes worth of footage, which accounts for botched or bad takes, director incompetence, or just wanting “something more” from the performance. 13 Months has about a 6 or 7 to 1 ratio, and with a potential for some reshoots and alternative endings, it might even balloon to 8 or 9 to 1.
Long story short, I gotta get to capturing. So long, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
By the way, tomorrow’s my third year anniversary blogging. You’d better drink a martini for me.