So this is my question on the WHOLE fest thing....

Or the requried element is "No Guns"

I take it you have gun overload:violent5:

If the next fest is crimefest or the like, You are in for it.:happy:
 
I don't think it matters. There are some films that use guns as a crutch, but there are others that use them but the story is about so much more, like LAWLESS.

There were a LOT of guns in this fest though. :)

MAH
 
I have to preface this with admitting I'm bias, but I keep seeing people saying "with betrayal a lot of people would take the easy way out with guns and drugs" or like charli said "will there ever be no guns?" And I feel like I have to defend and say it's not just the easy choice to do that. It could be, but for some like myself, it might actually be harder. I, and I'm sure others, felt added pressure to do it well or give the audience something relatively new. So when people say its the easy thing to do for betrayal its kind of dismissive for the people who put just as much thought into telling a creative and hopefully new story using guns as ones without.

Whether I was successful in that is up to the individual viewers though.

And I apologize to Charli if she wasn't saying that in a "cmon guns really?" sort of way, which I doubt she was, but just something I wanted to mention as I've seen a few people talk about it.
 
I think if there were alot of guns in this fest it was because of the theme. There were also alot of relationship betrayals and I think that just goes along with the betrayal aspect. Most people probably think of betrayal in terms of somebody they love or trust doing something to hurt them. When you look at it from that perspective you have relationships involved, but then if you want to turn up the heat or the stakes in a sense, you'll have guns involved.

There were some films that used guns as a crutch, but I think that's what makes a festival and more importantly this festival what it is. Filmmakers make the stories that "they" want to make and the kind of stories that they like and in the end we get a large variety of stories and an exposure to things that we may have never even thought of before.
 
Gotta go with Marlon on this one, make the story you want to make. Marlon leads in body count of course so he might be biased.:happy:
 
Reputations...courtesy dvxuser.com :)

But yes, I think the theme of this contest pushed guns into the mix more than usual.
 
I think the broader question is 'Will there ever be a fest without weapons'.

I'd argue that so long as there is one apple and two hungry mouths to feed, then the answer is no. Sticks, rocks, pointy things and ballistics are a means to an end (sharing is out of the question, of course). How the filmmaker executes (no pun) this all-too-human endeavor makes a big difference.

If I'm more aware of the gun than the story, then the gun is a crutch, much in the same way that a car, a vial of poison, T&A, a bad habit or any other story element can and does take over a film.

Without naming names, one 'gun film' in this fest really stood out. A few others handled it well in the context of the story - but I wouldn't miss the gun if it were gone, and few others relied heavily on the gun to carry the film.

'Christine' and 'Jaws' are good examples of keeping the element in check and letting the story drive the film. 'Quigley down under' is a good example of a gun element never allowed to rule the story. 'Road to Perdition' is another fine example. My all-time fave, however, is the Japanese pulp fiction film 'Zatoichi'. Could you take the sword out of the film? Probably not, but it never dominates the story.

So, a gun in the hands of a gun fighter is as effective as a gun in the hands of a good storyteller. Certainly Jesse James and Al Capone are ledgends much larger than the guns used to pave their road to ruin.

Do I like guns? Not in real life. And I do think they are a path of least resistance for some filmmaker/storytellers. No shortage of 16-year-olds dressed up to look like 30-year-old evil execs and swat running around shooting everything in site. But is it art!!!


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I was really surprised by all the guns. I didn't get excited about this fest initially because I thought it was going to be all drama and no action. Cheating spouses, not interesting to me. So I thought the alien thing was so far from this drama stuff. Now its just another movie where one person is shooting another. I think it it gives the films that are different a leg up on everyone else who did schemers, killers, heisters, cheaters, haters and moles. And two college students in a library takes the cake. I think DougSpice said, I made a good short first and a betrayal fest entry second. So take the theme away and mix these movies with all sorts of other movies and you might feel differently about the ones that use guns and violence. They might stand apart more.

So maybe they should get rid of the theme idea. Try for a regular short film contest with no theme, do what you want. I have a feeling there would still be a lot of guns. The movies I watch have guns in them. They do the best in the theaters and thats what we as viewers want to see. At least I do.
 
alex whitmer said:
I think the broader question is 'Will there ever be a fest without weapons'.
Click to expand...


For my next fest entry I'm going to do what Marlon did with Lawless. Except instead of guns there will be nunchucks. Instead of a black marshall, the marshall will be a robot boy (rom). Instead of fighting in Oklahoma, they'll be fighting on Croquanna Island. I'm going to use all the elements that work and slam them together and throw in some nunchucks. I can't lose! I think I'll even give the robot boy a cape. (xepoj). There will be a topless woman typing up this event in the corner of the screen on a remington. It won't be easy for her because she'll be wearing boxing gloves. In the end she'll fight the robot boy up until the point where she morphs and takes his body like in mirror, mirror. There will be an exploding car in the background. A lot of this will happen on a split screen.

The title... "There will be nunchucks"
 
GoodLuck said:
For my next fest entry I'm going to do what Marlon did with Lawless. Except instead of guns there will be nunchucks. Instead of a black marshall, the marshall will be a robot boy (rom). Instead of fighting in Oklahoma, they'll be fighting on Croquanna Island. I'm going to use all the elements that work and slam them together and throw in some nunchucks. I can't lose! I think I'll even give the robot boy a cape. (xepoj). There will be a topless woman typing up this event in the corner of the screen on a remington. It won't be easy for her because she'll be wearing boxing gloves. In the end she'll fight the robot boy up until the point where she morphs and takes his body like in mirror, mirror. There will be an exploding car in the background. A lot of this will happen on a split screen.

The title... "There will be nunchucks"
Click to expand...
LOL!!!! That's some cool stuff right there! Do it!!
 
GoodLuck said:
For my next fest entry I'm going to do what Marlon did with Lawless. Except instead of guns there will be nunchucks. Instead of a black marshall, the marshall will be a robot boy (rom). Instead of fighting in Oklahoma, they'll be fighting on Croquanna Island. I'm going to use all the elements that work and slam them together and throw in some nunchucks. I can't lose! I think I'll even give the robot boy a cape. (xepoj). There will be a topless woman typing up this event in the corner of the screen on a remington. It won't be easy for her because she'll be wearing boxing gloves. In the end she'll fight the robot boy up until the point where she morphs and takes his body like in mirror, mirror. There will be an exploding car in the background. A lot of this will happen on a split screen.

The title... "There will be nunchucks"
Click to expand...


What if it was......in space?
 
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