Gizmodo Lenovo Contest Entry

Hey guys… sorry about the lack of updates for a couple days. Believe it or not, I’m working on a cool little project that I want to write about. Honest. That’s my excuse.

Anyway, a few days ago I saw a contest at gizmodo with a pretty sweet prize – a Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad worth $1500. The task? Make a 60 second film noir movie.

I’ve never actually made a short or anything before. In fact, I’d never really edited video. But what’s a better way of learning than jumping in head first? Besides, with the polyphasic thing going, I have time to enter every contest I see (by the way – no oversleeping or tiredness for the past 3 days!).

Making the video was a lot of fun. I had no camera man, so I had to get really creative. First watch the video, and then I’ll tell you the funny trivia bits about it.

Pretty cool, huh? Now I want to make a movie. I think people are idiots when they claim you need tons of money to make movies. I’m going to prove them wrong and make a kick ass movie for under $1000. Terry and Manish have a KILLER idea for one, so if they’ll let me, I’ll do that concept. If not, I’ll make up my own. How hard could it be?

Anyway, here are some interesting things about the film :

• The laptop is exactly where I am sitting. It was the best wall to film, so I changed the lighting and filmed it after the other part.
• TWO laptops were harmed during this production. One was thrown away.
• To make it look like the laptop gets shot, I had an elaboate rigging using fishing line, a large pot, and a lawnmower battery
• The bottle of booze is actually olive oil. I don’t drink so I had no bottles around
• The laptop that got shot isn’t actually the laptop that smashed on the ground (although it did fall off the table)
• The gunshot is a sound effect, but the smashing noise is real

It also occurred to me that I always win these sorts of things. I think it’s because I overkill them. I’ve won first place in three contests that I can think of, all of which gave me expensive electronics. None this good, though.

For you regular readers of this site : I’m going to finish up the Pick Up Artist series soon, and continue the school bus one. Also I have some REALLY cool other entries coming this week.