Carte Blanche - A Feature Film Written & Directed by Matt Kieley

Whenever I did this I was always amazed how some scenes looked clipped and how some scenes looked too long ... especially when you're watching in a darkened theater and you see the movie without interruptions. You get a whole feel for it.
 
Thanks for watching and liking, sir. Herman Witkam is working on the score currently, and I'm cutting a couple of new trailers that will hopefully tell the story. Up until now the trailers have been more impressionistic. They give you a feel for the film (I hope) but they don't really tell you what it's about.
 
The official site looks original. The trailer is too long and it has some room tone jumps. You need to clean the sound when there is no music covering the jumps.

Also, the synopsis could be improved a bit:

Synopsis: Helena is a lonely artist who has just been dumped by her musician ex-boyfriend, Peter. Elliot is a lonely filmmaker who is trying to make a short film based on his most recent heartbreak. When Elliot meets Helena and casts her in his film, they quickly become close friends. But Elliot becomes sidetracked and falls for Helena, while struggles between getting over her ex, winning him back, carrying out an affair with loser barfly, and maintaining her friendship with Elliot.
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Synopsis: Helena is a lonely artist who has just been dumped by her musician boyfriend Peter. Elliot is a lonely filmmaker who is trying to make a short film based on his most recent heartbreak. When Elliot meets Helena and casts her in his film, they quickly become close friends. Elliot falls for Helena. Helena struggles with getting over her ex, winning him back, carrying out an affair with a barfly, and maintaining her friendship with Elliot.

Maybe :) 5% better?

Good luck; you have a feature film about a very difficult subject. I know you went through hell sorting out your feelings in making this movie; but you have finally brought it to a level that can be viewed and enjoyed.

I find it an honest effort by a young filmmaker.
 
Thanks. I actually subsequently have altered the synopsis slightly. I wrote it about four months ago, and my sister finally found the time to put the site together, so it's a little old. I took out the part about the affair with the barfly (Xander) because it's no longer accurate. Originally, there was an ongoing affair of sorts with that character, but I've since cut it differently. I changed it to be a one-time thing, mainly because I thought it kind of hurt Helena's character, plus Xander had become the comic relief of sorts, and I really changed my mind abut the kind of humor the character brought. I thought he had become too much of a joke, and I didn't want a character to exist for that purpose, so I toned down the few scenes he's still in, and cut out the whole affair business. So I've changed the synopses on the myspace page every so slightly, but I need to get in touch with my sister so she can fix it on the site. And yeah, it's another reason to cut a new trailer; the dialogue between Helena and Xander is not even in the film anymore. I've already cut a new trailer, and I'm waiting until the score is done before I finalize it. But it'll be more of a trailer-y trailer,that hopefully communicates the story more clearly.
 
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I was talking to Coryn McBride about the scripts I'm working on. I have a tendency to re-write scenes as I shoot, and I re-shoot scenes later, so I decided I'd write maybe one or two drafts of these new scripts, and continue changing things as I go along. Then she brought to my attention a notion that hadn't occurred to me. She said that it can be frustrating as an actor if the story changes because the motivation can differ from scenes that have already been shot. It's a valid point, and I've been thinking about it a lot. I kind of have mixed feelings about it. Maybe it's just the type of actor she is. She does theatre, which has little room for exploration . You can only explore the character as far as the text (which never changes) allows you to. But I know a lot of actors who like to improvise and explore, who have ideas of their own on how things can change.

I want to find a way to explore and experiment that works for both types of actors. This will be another thing to experiment with on the next film. I want to see if shooting in sequence will make it work. I don't think re-shooting scenes later quite fits into this, and it leaves room for inconsistency, but perhaps shooting in sequence, and changing things as we go one step at a time might help to not have to re-shoot anything later. I don't really know, but that's my theory. It might even have a different emotional effect on the actor's performance if everything happens in order. Cassavetes usually shot in strict sequence, and I've always been interested in trying it.
 
very interesting, Billy
i think carte blanche is digital storytelling
while cassevetes is analogue
if you shoot chronologically you won't be able to change the story anymore; you'll be able to edit scenes out and tighten but not reshoot scenes that are part of the story

with digital filmmaking it's easier to fragment a story and treat all elements independently of time factor
as much as you admire cassevetes, you should stick with what you're doing

imho
 
Missed Slamdance and Rotterdam. Working toward SXSW. The more I think about it, the more it seems like SXSW would be the best home for this film. They have a history of playing films like this (character-driven indie films about young relationships) and they also have a music festival, and music is a very big part of the film. One of the characters is a musician, in fact.
 
Has it been a month since I last posted in this thread? Well the film is as complete as can be at the moment. There was still some ADR to be done, but the person we need lives in Long Beach and hasn't been able to come to Bakersfield. Plus I'm certain she hates me at the moment. I had to write a bio for the SXSW entry form. This is what I came up with:

Matt Kieley is from Bakersfield, California. Home of country western icon Buck Owens and poor air quality. Not really known for film, although Hitchcock shot some parts of some of his films there (you know that scene with the airplane in the cornfield in North By Northwest? Bakersfield). Matt Kieley began making films at the age of 12, although age 10 was when he wanted to make his first film, but neither he, nor his parents, or any of his friend's parents had a camera. This would have been around 1997 or '98 (ish).

But, in the year 2000, the universe, and his parents, entered the new millennium and purchased a Hi8 camcorder, and so he made his first film; a slasher movie parody. And it was terrible, but Matt Kieley continued to spend his adolescence making movies and honing his craft (if you can really call it that) and having his heart broken by many girls. Eventually these two elements came together, and Kieley had what he at first thought was an original idea: he would make a talky, character-driven, semi-autobiographical film about his heartbreak and how sad he is about it.

That was September of 2006, and he had just turned 19. After attempting to make a different feature film, which never came together (and would have been awful had it actually gotten made) he decided to tell a more personal story. Over three years, ten drafts of the screenplay, two months of shooting, a week's worth of re-shoots, and nine months of editing later, he completed his first feature film, Carte Blanche, which you have the pleasure of viewing before anyone else, right now! Really, you're the first person. Matt Kieley hasn't even seen it. He was blindfolded throughout the entire process. Matt Kieley is a hopeless romantic, and, according his friends, a good guy, despite being a pretentious asshole. He also feels a little ridiculous and crazy referring to himself in the third person when forced to write bios about himself for film festival entry forms.
 
for original, billy (matt). not a bad bio.

congratulations on completing your movie.
and best of luck with the festivals.
 
Thank you so much, sir!

I screened the movie for some friends tonight. They're the first audience to see it. They responded pretty well too. And they're very honest, and I could sense their enjoyment was genuine. But what I really got out of it was how it plays to other people. It drags a tad at the end, but other than that, the pace is surprisingly solid. I'm going to start showing to to some more friends and strangers soon.
 
Tighten the end then; don't wait. You can always go back and add it back. Well, it depends on how many screenings you can arrange. I had trouble finding a place to screen my movie THE RED QUEEN. Theaters were going to cost me $1,000 or more. Digital projection is more expensive in cinema houses. If they don't have digital projectors, the theater owners say, "We have to rent the equipment." That meant I had to pay extra....

Anyway, hold as many screenings as you can, and run some tape on the whole screening. Then you can transfer the sound and listen to it together with the movie as you play it on your editing system.

You can even edit according to the reactions of the audience. Frank Capra used to do that. He had a Nagra running in the middle of the theater. He transferred the recording to 35mm mag and played it along with the movie in interlock. If the audience coughed, he figured it was boring. He'd cut some scenes out and tightened the movie or restructured it. If they laughed at a line and the other funny line came too close and the audience didn't hear it because it was covered with the reaction to the first line, he inserted something and delayed the second line.

Then he would hold another screening and continue the process, until the movie played perfectly.
 
Screened the film for friends again. Definitely glad I cut those two minutes. My friends have been wanting to see it over and over again, so I guess that's a good sign. So far teenager, twenty-somethings and even middle-aged parents have seemed to enjoy it. I went to a reading at a books tore from a local journalist who has written some positive things about my work in the past. I'm going to give him a copy of Carte Blanche so he can write a review.
 
Got a rejection email from SXSW today. I guess I should start looking around at other festivals. I really want to just dive head-first into my next feature and just make a better movie, but we all worked too hard on this film to just shelve it. I'm kind of tempted to just put the whole thing on youtube and see what happens, but I guess that could hurt its chances of playing at some festivals.
 
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