Scramblers, Let's Start Scrambling

Ok, so let's get this out of the way first; where the hell have I been?!   Well, that’s a good question.   I’m glad I asked.

Back towards the end of July I went on vacation with my entire family, and I got really lazy for a while, then I got kinda busy and forgot to update my blog.

Yep, that’s it. 

What? You were expecting something more elaborate? Some tale of prolonged misery and/or great fortune? Sorry, my life isn’t that exciting.

Anyway, I’m back and I’m going to try to be a bit more consistent for the one or two of you that read my blog. My next post will be the second in my “Story of ‘Transfers’” that I started last time, but today I wanted to tell you about the Sidewalk Scramble. As you may know (and if you don’t, please check out their link) the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival is a yearly independent film festival that takes place over a long weekend in and around the Alabama Theatre in downtown Birmingham. They just completed their 13^th festival back in August. What you may not know is that Sidewalk hosts other, much smaller scale events throughout the year. One of which took place this past weekend; the Sidewalk Scramble. The Scramble is a 48 hour film competition. That is, you have 48 hours, beginning Friday evening, to write, shoot, edit and score a short film. You get all the rules and certain props and themes (dubbed “inspiration items”) at the kick-off Friday night, so you can’t really plan ahead other than getting your team together and figuring out what each person is contributing.

This time around the overarching theme was Horror. Seasonally appropriate. Chance and I went to the kick-off at 6pm Friday evening to get our instructions and inspiration items. I’ll quickly break it down for you; all films had to be under 5 minutes, our horror sub-genre was “stalker,” our inspiration item was a length of oxygen tubing, and we had to incorporate some theme, concept, line of dialogue, something from the film “Orphan.”

And so it went. Chance and I sat down at Rocky’s Pizza and hashed out a concept, came up with a storyline, then broke it down into individual scenes. That was about as elaborate as the scripting got. The rest, like dialogue, we figured out as we went along. Then we called in the full team and went to work. The weekend was long and exhausting, and I was unfortunately on call for my day job, so at least twice I had to leave to drive out to the hospital and replace a printer or some such issue. But, man, was it a blast. Tough work, long and tiring, but we had such great people on our team making the whole experience just amazing fun. I’d do it again this weekend if my weary brain could handle the lack of sleep (but without the trips to work).

Here are some behind the scenes pictures from the Scramble.  Thanks to Jonathan Nelson for taking these.  Click on the image for a larger view.

Here's me manhandling Michael Shelton.

Our lead actress, Catherine, and Michael looking entirely too menacing.

Chance laughs as I try to use a camera.

If you’re in the Birmingham area and want to see what the Scramble is all about, the Sidewalk Horror Scramble Screening is October 6^th at Sloss Furnaces beginning at sundown I believe since it’s an outdoor screening. All the films made during the Scramble will be shown (I think there were around 12 or 13 teams), followed by the announcement of the winners of the competition. Should be a lot of fun. And it’s free!

And now ...

Congratulations to Alabama native and Sidewalk Scramble alum Adam Wingard.  The new film he directed, "You're Next," recently played the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX to rave reviews at both fests, and was then aquired by Lionsgate Films for theatrical release.  And if that weren't enough, his previous film, "A Horrible Way to Die" was just released on DVD and Blu-Ray.  Stop showing off, dude.

And finally today, a new feature; Music I Dig.  Here's a cat I came across a few years ago.  Josh Pyke is an Australian singer/songwriter, and he deserves a much wider audience ... but, you know, he's from Australia.  This song is one of my favorites of his, and the video is visually awesome.