Today I hold in my hands a book by Albert Halstead. It’s a monograph Al wrote as a critical analysis of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I did the cover artwork and design.

“Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – How Patterns, Archetypes and Style Inform a Narrative,” treats the film as a work of art with purpose. Al writes about how Kubrick used the language of cinema, mathematics, and music to tell the story of man and technology.

Holding it in front of me, it feels like I’m actually part of Kubrick’s movie now. That’s kind of cool.

The book is currently on the shelves in about half of the independent and college bookstores in the Southern Tier, including Cornell University and Ithaca College. It is currently awaiting approval from Barnes & Noble and CD Baby. There may be independent book stores in the Monroe County area carrying it soon as well.

In the meantime you can order the book directly by sending a check to:

Leonine Productions, LLC
7 Spring Street
Waverly, NY 14892

email: ahalst(AT)verizon.net

Full retail price is $22.95, plus N.Y. State sales tax (based on your county).
For shipping, please add $3.00

Al is offering a discount price for members of Rochester Movie Makers, Upstate Independents, and Binghamton Classic Films members:
$17.59 (about a 23% discount). With the Monroe County (8% ) sales tax added the total comes to exactly $19.00. RMM members can avoid postage if they’d rather arrange to pick up a book at the next meeting.

Click here to see the cover in close-up.

I’ve had it with pretending I know everything. At least once a day, I get stumped by something I want to do, but Photoshop won’t let me. Or Premiere. Or Final Cut.

Sure, I could look it up in the instructions. I could Google it. I could post questions on message boards. But I’ve done all that, and you know what? It’s time consuming, and I often don’t get the answers I’m looking for.

So now I have a new plan. I’ll be posting my questions in video form, and the internet will bring the answers to me.

Watch for the latest webcast sensation, coming soon.

I just watched American Grindhouse, the all-inclusive documentary about the history of exploitation films in America. It’s a great doc, shining a light on the entire spectrum of fringe movies, from the earliest days of cinema to today.

My interest in the subject matter led me to become an “internet friend” of director Elijah Drenner a few years ago when he was working on the special edition of Jack Hill’s Spider Baby. He reached out to ask me to do some animated titles many months ago, and I jumped at the opportunity. I did “film burn” effects from scratch in After Effects, communicating with Elijah and editor Andrew Goldenberg (aka Goldentusk) entirely through email and Facebook. Who says social media is just a fad?

Yeah, it’s cool to see my name credited along side the likes of John Landis, Joe Dante, Jack Hill, Larry Cohen, H.G. Lewsis, and Fred Williamson. The movie has some great interviews with film scholars Eddie Muller, Kim Morgan, and Eric Schaefer (whose “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!” sits within arm’s reach on my bookshelf right now). A nice surprise was discovering that the narrator is Rochester’s own Robert Forster!

American Grindhouse is making the rounds to “festivals first followed by TV, DVD, etc” according to Elijah.

In the meantime, check out the website at http://americangrindhouse.com

Connect with A.G. on Facebook here.

Some stills of my titles are online here.

Some of my film burn animation can be viewed here.

It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I updated this blog. Why is that? Am I spreading myself too thin? Perhaps I need to pull some of my many projects into one place. (Perhaps I’ve already been doing that on Facebook?) Perhaps I need to rethink my blogs, podcast, and website and make them all one sticky blob of a website.

But not tonight.

No, tonight I’ll be giving a run-down of things that are going on in my world. Ready?

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THE 360 | 365 FILM FESTIVAL

During my day job at Animatus Studio, I’ve been working my tail off with a new uber-website. The Rochester High Falls Int’l Film Festival is now called 360 | 365, and the website is its public face. It’s a daring new identity, and I’m really invested in making this year’s film festival better than ever.

Check it out at http://film360365.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/film360365
Animatus on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/animatus

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SUBTERRANEA PROJECTS

Remember The Other Gods? It’s playing in Buenos Aires. Yeah, that’s cool.

Love classic horror movies? My horror-movie-music-video-mash-up for Aviary’s Skeletal Remains is playing at The Little this Halloween.

Do I have a new career as an actor? Well, let’s put it this way — I only go out for silent movies. Mike Russo’s Virgin Fang features me and was edited by… me.

No clips for those last two on the internet yet, but you can see each at The Little Theatre’s 25 Hour Horror Feast October 31st.

And then there’s Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated. Honestly, it’s too complicated to explain here, but there’s clips over on the Subterranea blog.

Read about all of that at http://maddogmovies.com/subterranea
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/subterranea

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MIND RIP

The John Vincent movie project is chugging along. We shot several scenes this summer, including a zombie congregation of epic proportions. I put on my assistant director hat and got out there to wrangle zombies — a great experience. We’re working on editing a promotional trailer to present to investors.

See some pics & clips at http://philrosefilms.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/mindrip

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ROCHESTER MOVIE MAKERS

Another summer, another series of summer shorts. I worked as A.D. on Wing Man, written by Mike Russo and directed by Derrick Petrush. It’s currently being edited, but the footage I’ve seen is pretty darn impressive.

RMM also hosted a night of shorts at the Club at Water Street a couple weeks ago. We had about 100 people, raised some cash for the 501c3, and we’re looking forward to doing it again in the future.

Join the educational cooperative at http://rochestermoviemakers.org

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OBLIGATORY SOCIAL MEDIA PLUG:

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. Here are my favorite virtual locations.

I’m on the Twitter. Find me at http://twitter.com/mikeboas

Facebook is much cooler than Myspace. Find me at http://facebook.com/mikeboas

Those of you following my Twitter feed have probably seen my references to Script Frenzy.

I first heard about this online competition a couple months ago. And by competition, I mean a thing you do with other writers not for money, but for the satisfaction of accomplishing a goal. The point of Script Frenzy is to write 100 pages in 30 days. That’s 3 1/3 pages a day.

That sounded like something worth trying. Can I test myself? Can I pump out a first draft in one month instead of the year(s) it usually takes? Can I force myself to write every day? Can I ignore the lure of the television?

So far, the answer is… sort of. No, I haven’t been able to write every day. But yes, I am getting something done. I’m working at half speed, but there’s still time to catch up. And even if I write three pages every two days, I’ll have something in two months. Not bad.

What am I writing? It’s a sci-fi action movie I’ve had in the back of my brain for a few years. I already had tons of notes and an outline, but now I’m actually writing the thing. One intimidating factor is the main character — I’m determined to write a female lead. I’ve been told to just write the character, don’t worry about the gender. Maybe on the second pass I’ll put in lots of references to fashion and hair products. (Kidding.)

Naturally, when I started last week, I got all jazzed up about the new internet technology I could use. Maybe if I make this project as public as possible, I’ll feel obligated to follow through and finish it! So I’m making the process transparent. I’m blogging about the writing process, tweeting my #scriptfrenzy stats on Twitter, and posting the script itself as it’s being written. I’m even using a new cloud application called Zhura instead of MS Word. I can access the files and write from anywhere with an internet connection.

Why not check it out? I could use the support. Visit the Gamers screenplay site at http://maddogmovies.com/gamers