February Updates (Walking Through the Tree of Life)

The shortest month of the year always ends up being one of the busiest. At least we can see the light of spring making sparse cracks in the ice of our current days. What will you have blossoming when the spring comes?

Februrary 2010 News & Notes:

It's a busy time and a lot of good things are coming up. Here's a quick rundown, but make sure to pay special attention to the "Antithesis Worldwide Pledge Fund."

Antithesis has just been awarded an Aloha Accolade Award for Excellence in Filmmaking by the Honolulu International Film Festival. The ceremony will take place on April 25, 2010 in Honolulu.

This is the first award for the film to date. In order to make sure the film gets more exposure to end up in a theater near you, please pick up a pledge gift by going here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/perfectentropy/antithesis-worldwide

We only have 30 days to reach 100%, and currently we're holding at 9%. If we don't get 100% or more, then no one will be charged. The pledge will succeed only if we reach 100%.

In order to get the fires burning for our spring to the end of the pledge, all $10 level donations will receive an Official "Antithesis" poster. 500 people x 1 $10 poster each = Success.

Also, I'm designing the new DVD art for the Special Edition "Antithesis" release after the pledge, so I'll post samples up for people to vote on for the final cover. You have to pledge first though, cowboys and cowgirls.

Project Updates:

-All Tomorrow's Children:

About halfway through the screenplay now. The note cards turned out to be a great blueprint to craft the script, but even better as something to throw conflicting ideas against. I can't really give anything away about it, but for me the film will end up as a mixture of a Kandinsky painting, Donnie Darko, The Prodigy, The Bomb Squad & The Creatures. Darkly funny, violent and romantic stuff . . .

- Vesica Pisces

The following is the episode list of the first installment of the Vesica Pisces series.

(1) "She Is The Infinite"
(2) "And That Is Why She Has Names"
(3) "Both One and Many"
(4) "She Hides in the Night"
(5) "And Forgets Herself in the Daylight"
(6) "Everyday is a Dream"
(7) "When You Become Someone New"
(8) "Or Maybe We're Still Sleeping"

Together, the titles give an idea about the meaning of the entire series. More to come as the project develops, but American Psycho, Akira and 1984 are some of the more palpable influences here.

-Reverse Bullets
Casting. Designing. Coming soon. I promise.

Completely unrelated, but also of note.

Californication is brilliant. Weeds is close. Netflix's Watch Instantly function is the only thing that can keep me going at night.


Talk soon,
jce


UPDATE: Oh yeah, and WWW.PERFECTENTROPY.COM will be up and & running VERY, VERY soon.

"All Tomorrow's Children" - 011110 update

Stage one of the first Perfect Entropy feature film (or "how many holes can i make in my wall before the script is written?")

More to come . . .

Perfect Entropy: 2010 and beyond (part magick; part science)

The evidence of absence is invisible math. Learn to count from zero to zero to one. - 120509jce

While we all wait for old women and sensitive girlfriends to weep and faint during the "Antithesis" screenings, I've been prepping the next crop of projects. (It's hard to just think about one thing for an extended period of time, isn't it? That just feels so lazy.)

Here's some info about my next crop of projects as well as when to expect them (UNLESS SOMEONE HIRES ME TO WRITE & DIRECT X-MEN 4. PLEASE? .)

"All Tomorrow's Children" - summer/fall 2011
My first feature is going to be shot on location in St. Louis, MO. It's a part surrealist, part grinding realist look at three teenage outcasts who try to live out all of their greatest desires on the last day of existence: December 31, 1999.

Check out these two songs on my writing playlist for the project:
"Chaos" - U.N.K.L.E.
"At the Helm" - Hieroglyphics

Reverse Bullets - spring/summer 2010
Reverse Bullets is an audiovisual band compromised of myself on visuals and Justin Schulz (composer for Antithesis, Julya and Salvation (Without You) ) on musical duties. Things are moving forwardly - steadily, albeit slowly at times. The production design is being handled by Za Martohardjono who was the DP for Julya and inertia. The visual scope is getting larger by the day, moreso than I expected. (Is there a genre for electronic psychadelic, expressionist erotica? Shouldn't there be?) As soon as the visuals are shot, we'll begin the music sessions immediately, along with filling out the band roster. Live shows to come. I promise.

"Vesica Piscis" - ongoing
Jean Goto and I have been developing a character who is the next evolutionary step from "Julya" and "Antithesis." One fine Saturday evening, Jean sent me a text that simply read, 'I want to play a violent character.' From there, my brain began to buzz like an electrical hailstorm. The series features: swords, fascists and the color purple. That's all I'll say for now.

Jean Goto



Too early to tell in what form this character will appear, though an anthology style film is being kicked around.

"Cacophony A.D." - late 2010
Similar in vein to Reverse Bullets, but grimier and much more aggressive. Think along the lines of "The Wall" and "Battle of Algiers" with dark hip-hop beats, multi-character monologues, opera singers, etc.

It will blow your ears and eyes into the next century.

Zach Steele (you know, this guy) will be handling the musical reins here.

"Dreams of Ivory" - 2012
Feature film.

Won't give away too much here as this project is in very, very early stages. It's actually a script that I wrote three years ago, but knew that I didn't want to direct it for a long time. Now, I realize why I needed that time.

In short, the film is two things: a tragic love story and a vampire film. No, not a pre-teen pimple-faced, gelled hair, Abercrombie model vampire film, but a real one. The closest thing to it would be a mixture of "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Birth," but with vampires, of course. None of that Seventeen magazine, mall goth posturing. There will be blood . . .

Expect previews and news as things develop further on all of the projects. Maybe a New Year's Eve gift . . .

Marrying Picture to Sound w/ Old Friends

The best part of making films for me is planning the music. Even Edison himself stated that the invention of the kinetoscope was always intended to be accompanied by the kinetophone. During the entire process of planning and scoring, I can't remember how many times Justin or myself echoed the idea that "sound must marry to the picture" from our mutual guru David Lynch.

Thus, before I wrote the script {this is still during the stage of just bringing together all of the scattered notes and pieces}, I assembled a playlist. Either texturally, lyrically or sonically, these songs helped give form to the film. I gave this playlist to Jean Goto {A}, Justin and Anton Calderon (co-composer) . Some of the included songs ended being part of the film's temp score, which is a fun version to watch; it's like a visual mixtape. Too bad there was no money for licensing those.

In order to get the mood perfect from the first frame, Justin composed a great piece of electronic blues for which we brought in Eirik Chevarud on saxophone. We all grew up together in U.City {boy scouts, soccer, the old apt with our landlord's "6666" sex dungeon}, so it was a good experience. Working with friends isn't like working at all. After a long day, we got a great opening theme.

Photos from Recording Session: here

Live Take of Eirik Recrding Theme: here and here

For those interested, here's the original temp score track list: (try lining up to the music in the film now)


1.) "Blade Runner Blues" - Vangelis, Blade Runner OTS
2.) "Ghosts II 13" - Nine Inch Nails (also the song from the trailer)
3.) "Zhora's Retirement" - Vangelis, Blade Runner OTS
4.) "She's So" - Roykspopp
5.) "Untitled" - Amon Tobin feat. Kid Koala
6.) "Joseph" - Tricky
7.) "Plainsong" - The Cure

You can hear a lot of the influences in the final film, but Justin and Anton did a great job taking things even further. Fun time.

jce

Here we are now . . .

Another new home.

This is for those who like jumping all the way in the rabbit hole. It could get sticky . ..

Here we (I)'ll be posting previews, demos, etc of upcoming projects; but even better than that, this will also be the place where we'll re-engage with some old work. What does that mean? Lots of reinterpretations and investigations into work you may/may not recognize.

Anyway, to start things off:

1.) "Antithesis" online in its entirety until it's forced to leave (for your convenience.)
2.) Portfolio of artwork, inspirations and random bits that went into construction of the film's look

It's a good start.
More to come soon.

jce