A lot of the reels had some cool packaging and designs. Some of these came in cleaver boxes. Two in particular stand out. One individual took a piece of cardboard box and bended four ways to make a DVD case. The top and bottom of the case was hollow, so you can see into the DVD. While the DVD was held into place, by some foam glued to the box. Another DVD case was made from a small thick manila folder with two slits in each side to hold the DVD and the title card in place. As memorable as the packaging was, I don’t remember the reels themselves. This is because the reels didn’t have a particular focus.

The most memorable of these reels, where the ones who had a theme and a narrative thread. One that still stands out, even after two weeks, was a medical reel by a Mexican Director. His reel; had a few spots with a major TV star talking about hospitals, another two non-profit medical related pieces and a few pharmaceutical spots that feature one or two different drugs. The reason, I remember this reel is because nobody else did anything like it. If I was hiring somebody to do a drug ad, or anything medical related, he would be the first person I would call. It’s like any job out there. The person that targets their resume or in this case their reel will get the job by showing they have done this in the past.
Another outstanding reel was by a production company. The used packaging brilliantly. It was simple thing but was overlooked by all the others. They had the foresight to put a little silver sticker inside the box saying one of the spots recently won an award. This make me take my time to watch the reel and look for the specific spot. Anything that makes you “stand up and notice,” is a good thing. The crazy thing was on another reel, I saw a Cannes Lion winning spot but they didn’t highlight it.

To me the best commercial reels aren’t about cool visuals. The best reels are about the impact they have with their narratives, themes and aesthetics. It’s not about the expensive and/or funky packaging and design. It’s how they show the talent, story and product they are selling.

Here’s a graphical representation of my twitter account, via twitterholic.com

I recall going to this industry event back in March of 2009 and meeting this Twitter evangelist, she was touting the significances and praise of twitter. My thought process at that time was I don’t want to know what other people are doing at any particular moment or what they had for breakfast. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of that, on here but the real value of twitter is what connections you build and who you follow. As most of you who read my blog know, I’m a jack of all trades filmmaker / project manager, who recently finished his first film “Black Site.” For me the real value or the intrinsic value of twitter is what I have learned from the people I follow and the ones who are following me.

Let me explain and give some specifics. As a filmmaker, I follow other similar type of people who are doing what I’m doing, i.e., fellow filmmakers, editors, producers what have you. A great thing about twitter, you can find people in the career or industry you want to be in and at different levels of the industry spectrum. I follow people who are at my level, below me and above me in terms of what they have produced, directed and so on. Case in point, I follow Kevin Smith, who doesn’t right? but I also follow some fellow GREEK filmmakers in the US and abroad. A lot of the established filmmakers, I’ve noticed are on here to promote their films. There’s nothing wrong with this, per se. I’m also doing this. These filmmakers push or tweet nonstop on their films for a month before. Once the movie is out for a few weeks, their tweets slow down and their posts start to be about what they had for lunch at the Chateau Marmont. Then you have other filmmakers and independent producers who share their knowledge and provide a support for anybody who cares to listen and learn from their experience. One of the best is producer TED HOPE, he is a champion of Independent films and if you go to his blog you will learn everything and anything you need to know, about navigating the “Indie scene.” Another example is what two local filmmakers, who are using twitter to fund their next feature and short via crowdsourcing. These are two great examples on how Twitter is changing the landscape. This point can be applied to other industries and disciplines. Like the old adage, “twitter” is what you make of it.

Another great value of twitter is the support of you’re peers. People help build you up when you’re down by offering encouragement and singing your praise when you do something they like. Even though in most cases, you never meet them in person. Twitter has some very successful people on here, who provide some valuable words of wisdom and help motivate you by being positive and though provoking. One of these is Russell Simmons, who like Kevin Smith is a person everyone should follow.

The best part of twitter is the news aspect of social media. You can gauge what is big and popular on twitter at any given moment. This shouldn’t be earth shattering news but the real value is what you feel is news worthy to you. Let me explain, I use TweetDeck, it’s always running on my computer as I edit or work on projects. For people who aren’t familiar with this application, it helps you track all your conversations and follows all your friends, but on steroids. The best feature is it’s saved searches or key words. My saved searches are; Greece, Torture and Human Rights. Anytime any of these words come up in a post, they show up on my tweetdeck. This is an invaluable resource. One of the news stories I was able to find was the recent revelation that there was a secret Black Site on American soil at Guantanamo Bay. This news, reinforced and validated my film even more so. One of the main plot points of the film, happens after a news reporter, loosely based on some guy on FOX who went to GITMO. Instead of asking the tough question, this person did a fluff piece, sort of what you see reporters do on Red Carpet events. When the official report came out back in 2006, the cable channel tried to cover this up, by saying the visit happen before the report came out, which wasn’t the case. Another news related example is when the iPAD came out. The people I follow stop tweeting. My feed became a online ghost town. It seems most or all, where watching and listening to the news coverage. As you can see, I’m a geek at heart and the people I follow have a similar mindset.

One of the negative effect of twitter is I don’t write as many blog posts. When I see a cool video or find a good piece on editing or film making I tend to post it on Twitter instead of writing about it, on this blog. This has changed my blog to a more self promotional or self centric focus. Twitter for me has became the 6pm news show, while my blog is now the 10pm cable opinion show.

For me, it’s official I’m now another person drinking the Kool-Aid. If you want to follow me, hit me up here. And as always thanks for reading any and all comments are greatly appreciated.

So if you want the document, just click here.

All I ask in return is to either follow me on twitter or join my film’s facebook page. Thanks NL

I knew from the get go, I didn’t want to do the typical head shots of the key actors. I wanted to go in another direction by focusing on a key element of the film.

When we started cutting the film, one of the images that grab me the most was a shot in the beginning of “Black Site,” where we see a close up of a detainees hands come into focus.
This shot, then cuts to a long shot, where we see the detainee, in an orange jumpsuit, sitting on a metal chair with a black hood on. This image, I felt reinforced the concept and key element of the film.
I then set out to go get a photograph made of this shot for the main poster.
After we finished the color correction with the team from Final Frame NYC, they gave the movie a gray / metallic look through-out, where the only real color that “pops” is the orange color of detainees’ jump suits. This got me thinking, maybe a photograph will not be ideal for this, instead it should be an illustration.

I’ve always loved the minimalist movie posters of sixties films like Hickcock’s “Vertigo” and Preminger’s “Anatomy of a murder” Where, the poster uses a few colors and some basic shapes to create the film’s key elements. This and several concepts from Russian propaganda posters clinched it for me.

I then set out to find somebody who could do that for me and placed an ad on craigslist.org for an illustrator. In the ad, I was very specific and gave several examples to the potential hire for the poster. I found two great recent examples of what I wanted, one was Lee Daniel’s poster for “Precious.” This poster is great, it shows a silhouette of Precious in negative space. The other was an image I found in Facebook in one of the causes I’m a part of. See above:

The artist, Edward, came back with a draft of the image, which is very close to my idea. The image uses four colors to create the detainee; black, orange, white and gray for the arms and head. It took me a few days to figure out a way to remove the gray color, so that the key colors where orange and black.
Like all my good ideas lately, it came to me in the middle of the night. What if, I make the whole background black on the poster and have one strip of light coming down to illuminate the detainee. This light will be the main color of the film, orange. This lead to the final poster (see below), we used a generic metallic background between the orange color element to make the orange more “dirty.”

I hope this post was helpful any and all comments are welcomed.

On a side note, the film recently played it’s first Human Rights Film festival in KIEV, UKRAINE.