New Site!!!

Please bookmark phasmamovie.com as the new home of Phasma Ex Machina. Check it out!

This Day in History

I've already touched on Edison in a previous post, but our movie owes a lot to his genius. Not only did he try to invent the machine upon which our film is based, but he was also the first to open a film studio in America.

Wired has it covered:

Feb. 1, 1893: Lights! Kinetograph! Action!

What is generally regarded as America's first film-production studio, Thomas Edison's "Black Maria," opens in West Orange, New Jersey.

Black Maria (pronounced "Mah-RYE-uh") was known more formally as the Kinetographic Theater -- after the Kinetograph, a forerunner of the movie camera. It was built on the grounds of Edison's laboratories. The Kinetoscope (a forerunner of the projector) had been developed there as well, by one of the inventor's underlings. Black Maria (nicknamed by assistants who likened its cramped quarters to the black marias, or paddy wagons, used by the police) was where Edison staged his first public demonstrations of films made for the Kinetoscope viewer. One of the earliest films made there was The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, known more colloquially as Fred Ott's Sneeze. And that's exactly what it was: a short film of a guy called Fred Ott, sneezing for the camera. The studio consisted of a dark room covered in tar paper, with a retractable roof. It was completed for the then-princely sum of $637.67 ($13,800 in today's money). Once the word was out, Edison was besieged by a slew of actors, acrobats, pugilists and a variety of other performers hoping to be filmed for posterity. While the Kinetoscope's vogue was relatively short-lived, it was profitable: A commercial Kinetoscope theater opened in New York City in 1894, charging a quarter for admission (five bucks these days), and others soon followed in San Francisco, Chicago and Atlantic City.

It's a nice coincidence considering we just held the official kickoff party for our own film last night. 115 years after Edison made his first film, we're just beginning ours.

Many big thanks to those who came out - the night turned out to be very successful and ridiculously fun. I have so much love for those people who donated to the cause. Thank you for supporting us!

Happy Updates

Lots of great movement lately. Here's the latest:

- I'm extremely pleased to announce that Entertainment Attorney Dan Satorius has agreed to represent our film during its gestation period. He comes with a wealth of experience and savvy. In fact, he's at Sundance right now and blogging about it.

- IFP MN has graciously opened their doors to us and will happily serve as our fiscal sponsor. This means that we're able to accept 100% tax-deductible donations through their well-oiled machinery. Click the Donate button on the right hand side to help out. Thanks Jane!

- Party!! Hodag Films is throwing a kick-off party for the film at their production offices on January 31st. If you'd like more information on the when/where, please contact jen@hodagfilms.com.

- I'd like to formally welcome Amity and Kerry to the team. Thank you for your enthusiasm, hard word, and great ideas. The film will be better because you're on board.

- On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm going to post a couple posters from a few of my short films. They don't live anywhere online and I like to give as much love to my actors and crew as possible.

Here they are:

Forgive the Absence

Got lost in Peru for a couple of weeks...

Limitations + Sausages = Good

Wisconsin native Orson Welles once said:

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."

After which I'm sure he added "please pass the sausage." But he couldn't have been more right about either.

We haven't even officialy begun pre-production and I can't count how many times I've already heard "Your budget is too small. You can't make a movie for that!"

Obviously, I disagree.

I believe that money makes things easier, not better. There are hard costs, of course, and we'd like to work with (and pay) talented people, cover our collective ass legally, and give the film a real chance to succeed in the marketplace. Filmmaking is not cheap, but the last time I checked, creativity was still free.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Accepting reality is a crucial part of a director's work, which -- arguably more than that of any other artist -- requires functioning within the limits of the possible.

"Any filmmaker has to balance the creative aspects and the practical, money aspects," said David Cronenberg, director of "Eastern Promises." "That is a normal part of filmmaking; it is one of the many tricks you have to be able to do."

Paul Haggis, the director of "In the Valley of Elah," said he welcomes financial limitations.

"I don't know what I would do with all the money in the world; I think I would be a very bad director. (Limitations) make you think and challenge yourself."

I understand it's convenient for an independent movie to roll out the virtues of thrift and creativity, but I truly believe it's honorable to create more from less. After all, just imagine what the poor ancient butcher would have done when given a couple pounds of scrap meat, a few yards of intestine, and nobody to eat either.

I'm betting he and Orson would have lots to talk about.

The Super and the Natural

Put your nerd hat on.

Long suspected, but never proved, NASA scientists recently discovered that the Northern Lights get their energy from a stream of charged particles flowing like a current through twisted bundles of magnetic fields. The solar wind carrying these particles consists of the fourth state of matter - plasma. Plasma is simply an ionized gas - it has one or more free electrons, which are not bound to an atom or molecule.

Here's plasma at work:



Rather ghostlike, eh?

This is where it gets kooky and you have to suspend disbelief for a moment.

Many paranormal experts believe that ghosts manifest themselves through the use of a visible ionized gas, namely plasma.

In his paper, "Towards a theory of ghosts: plasma and psychospheres," Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs writes:

It would seem, then, that the psychosphere is an electromagnetic field or at least has an influence on electromagnetism. But how could an electromagnetic field possibly take on the visual appearance of a ghost? This question has to my knowledge never been answered in existing literature and it is at this point that I would like to introduce plasma as the possible key to decipherment of the ghost enigma.[15] A plasma is an ionised gas, which is by definition located in an electromagnetic field. The particles of the plasma rearrange themselves according to the field lines of the magnetic field, so that a plasma in a field with a sufficiently strong current becomes a visible manifestation of the magnetic field. The shape a plasma takes on, therefore, is the shape of the magnetic field. It is now generally acknowledged that plasma accounts for 99.9 % of the universe; well-known examples of plasma formations are stars, the sun, the auroras, lightning, and fire. I would now propose the following working hypothesis for a new theory of ghosts:

A ghost is a plasma formed when the percipient's electromagnetic field overlaps with the electromagnetic 'psychosphere' of the – often distant – agent and the combined field strength ionises the gas particles in the air.

This hypothesis could be tested by a detailed comparison of the morphology of ghosts with plasma physics. Although I am in no way a specialist in plasma physics, a general reading of literature would support the following observations:

• Ghosts often glow or are visible in the dark. This is a property of plasma.
• Ghosts run the gamut of sometimes being completely transparent and sometimes being completely opaque. Opacity is a function of the density of the plasma.
• Ghosts occasionally produce sound, but they often have difficulty with it, fail to say something, or merely utter an eerie cry. Plasmas, such as auroras and lightnings, are frequently accompanied by sound.
• Most ghosts are stationary, but some are engaged in some activity or move around. Plasmas could be either stationary or mobile.
• Ghosts are sometimes seen passing through walls, but often open doors like ordinary people. There would be no boundaries for moving plasmas, although it appears that the agent urges the plasma to react as a living person would do.
• Ghosts never leave physical objects behind. Plasmas are simply ionised gases.
• Many ghosts start off as a ball, then become a ring or a humanoid form.

Hogwash or science? You be the judge.


Northern Lights energy source discovered

Towards a theory of ghosts: plasma and psychospheres

Writing about hauntings

Alex Epstein, screenwriter and blogger extraordinaire, analyzes his experience watching and re-watching The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist. Even though they both occupy a soft spot in my heart, I couldn't agree more with his take. I saw them both as a child, but there is no doubt that they're a little cheesy now.

Alex writes:

We're writing a haunted house movie, so we watched the AMITYVILLE HORROR and POLTERGEIST. I'd never seen the first, but I remember the second one being molto scary when I saw it in my 20's.

Lordy, how lame they seem now?

Is it the cheesy special effects? The late 70's styles, which seem so off now?

Or is it the really terrible acting and dialog?

For me, what's at the heart of the problem is that nothing is going on except haunting. You take a perfectly nice happy family with no problems -- something that doesn't exist -- and throw it into a perfectly nice happy place, and then we're all waiting for something to happen.

Here's my recipe for a haunted house movie: they're already having problems. They're arguing and not talking to each other enough. So you're interested in them, and something interesting is going on during the spaces between the supernatural incidents. And of course, they don't give up their point of view -- they don't stop arguing about whatever it was. Because people don't. Soldiers will keep arguing about who stole whose dessert while they're waiting for the next barrage -- even if only to keep their minds off being under fire.

I had this exact same point of view while writing Phasma Ex Machina. The supernatural aspect only serves as a Trojan Horse to the emotional heart of the narrative. I'm not interested in painting a false reality. I'm aiming for truth, albeit one with theoretical physics, murder, and people that won't stay dead.

Read the rest of his post here.

The Office (No, not the show)

We're very happy to report that Hodag Films (the production company behind Phasma Ex Machina) has upgraded to an extremely cool 1700 square foot warehouse loft located in the old Grain Belt bottling plant in the NE Arts District. If inanimate objects can haunt a building (think of the clown in Poltergeist) then this is definitely the place to be.

This is the latest in a line of recent developments that are conspiring to make the production a success. I would really like to thank Jen and Jean for making this happen.

The Light Bulb, the Motion Picture Camera...

Clue #4

"If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, other faculties and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth. Therefore, if personality exists after what we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave the Earth would like to communicate with those they have left here. I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something."

- Thomas Edison, Scientific American, October 1920

MN Filmmaking on the Up

I would imagine that this a "chicken or the egg" scenario, but the Star Tribune claims the film industry is undergoing a "bubbling renaissance" in Minnesota. Much of that is due to the high profile pictures that are being shot here, however, I'd argue that much of the attention radiates from one film - the locally produced Sweetland. Check it out if you haven't.

Star Tribune: Rosemount: Lights ... camera ... action

Sweetland Official Movie Website

Happy Halloween!

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was bad enough when the TV and lights inexplicably flicked on at night, Misty Conrad says. When her daughter began talking to an unseen girl named Nicole and neighbors said children had been murdered in the house, it was time to move. Put Conrad, a homemaker from Hampton, Va., firmly in the camp of the 34 percent of people who say they believe in ghosts, according to a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos.

A smaller but still substantial 23 percent say they have actually seen a ghost or believe they have been in one's presence, with the most likely candidates for such visits including single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services.

Check out the full article.


With that said...




HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Creative Choices

This following video has little to do with the actual production of Phasma Ex Machina other than serve as a shining example of what creative people can accomplish with limited resources. It also makes the importance of sound design abundantly clear.




PS - You may recognize Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz fame.