Check it out!

We had fun making it, and it almost killed us. It’s called THE EXHIBITIONIST and it’s not porn, I promise.  Here’s the synopsis:

A man and his suitcase take an extraordinary pixilated journey through MOCA’s exhibition Art in the Streets at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, as works by BANKSY, RAMMELLZEE and KENNY SCHARF come alive all around him.

The film was created in an improvisational fashion during three very busy days at the museum.  What an incredible setting to work in and be inspired by.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we couldn’t say no.  The short was made in collaboration with the Levi’s Film Workshop and Happy Product, Inc.

Produced with the generous support of the MOCA – http://www.moca.org

The MOST EXCELLENT Original Music and Sound Design is by old chum and CalArts alum Pete Houser http://www.bassbintwins.com

Here’s a behind the scenes shot showing you the crazy camera rig I built out of a rolling cart, a plastic crate, two tripods, some bungee cords and hot glue (oh how I miss the smell of hot glue…).  We had to be nimble and flexible to get all our shots.  Our original plan was to do it all in a day, but it ended up taking 3 days total.  It was my first real intense use of the most amazing stop-motion software ever created by humans, Jamie and Dyami Caliri’s DRAGON STOP MOTION.  If you don’t own it yet, get it!

Go check it out, tell us what you think!

ANSWER:  First of, thank you so much for liking the film and wanting to share it with others!  But actually since the film is now available at the iTunes Store, I can no longer give it away for free at sites like YouTube.  Although I would love to keep giving it away, so as many people as possible could see it, the quality of most of the shared versions I have seen is so low that I decided to do a new HD version for iTunes.  Now anyone can go there to buy it for the tiny sum of $2.99 (or $1.99 in standard def).  Each purchase helps offset the cost of making the HD version, and it looks pretty swell in HD, I have to say.  Seems like a good plan right?  Or what do you think, did we sell out?

After a long wait, I am excited to announce that the brand new High Def fully restored version of MORE is now available on iTunes!  I am very excited.  And it’s only 2.99!  Check it out and pass it along please.

I liked it so much I made a new short film with my awesome and multi-talented brudder Kent about it.  It is called THE EXHIBITIONIST and it will be premiere very soon–this SATURDAY in fact!  In the meantime go see the exhibit.  Here’s a tiny taste of the short film:

What do you think?  Look interesting enough?  The short is coming soon to an intertubes near you!

ANSWER: Wow, thanks for remembering Dropping Out! It will be available very soon, it has been hung up in all sorts of issues getting to DVD. We were trying to release the 11th anniversary edition this year to coincide with the release of UNCLE KENT at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, but it got hung up once again. Stay tuned for updates here at the site!

In the meantime, here is a sneak peek at the new artwork I created for the upcoming DVD release!

I don’t know who this guy is or where he came from but I can’t wait to see more from him.

Pictures aren’t enough to do this film justice. Picking one image is impossible. Just do yourself a favor and follow this link and see the film on the filmmaker’s site:

http://www.theexternalworld.com/

If it makes you happy, make sure you support this fellow and BUY a DVD HERE!

It’s a pretty solid theory and this is a brilliant analysis. Please donate after watching so we can get to see parts 3 and 4.

Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

ANSWER: Thank you for inquiring, and thank you for desiring to watch MORE. You’d like to watch MORE on your computer, you say? But you can! Just buy the MORE DVD from the ‘GET HAPPY’ HAPPY PRODUCT STORE© and when it arrives simply make your computer play it for you. If you don’t have a computer that can play DVD-type movies, get one! And if you’d like to actually find it somewhere on the internets, just wait…MORE is about to become available on the iTunes store in glorious HIGH DEFINITION, for the first time ever, anywhere! Make sure you check back or SIGN UP for updates and links when it happens. It is certainly guaranteed to make you HAPPY©!

…I can’t believe it’s taken me more than 30 years to see this blooper reel from the ONLY three Star Wars movies (seriously, don’t get me started).

Which reminds me, it’s that time of year again! The time where we get to celebrate both LIFE DAY and the fact that modern technology ensures that even pop culture’s biggest mistakes can’t be erased forever.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about (and I kind of hope you don’t) The Star Wars Holiday Special is a pretty hardcore feature length blooper that appeared in the form of a TV special that aired only once back in the winter of 1978 at the height of the early Star Wars mania. Since Christmas doesn’t exist in the Star Wars universe, they created Life Day, a noble attempt at creating an organic holiday that evokes the feelings of Christmas, but it still feels utterly contrived, sad and hilarious all at the same time.

You can read a pretty interesting set of interviews HEREincluding one with Lenny Ripps, the co-author of the first script for the special. It includes some crazy stuff that I have never heard before about George Lucas’ thinking about the Star Wars universe at that early time:

He said things like “Well, you know Han Solo is married to a Wookiee. but we can’t say that.” [As outrageous as Ripps's recollection sounds, there is evidence supporting it. Pat Proft corroborates it and an early draft of the Star Wars script (January 28, 1975) has Han Solo living with a furry female creature who he kisses. Proft also remembers learning that Han was raised by Wookiees, which is verified on pages 46 & 131 of Laurent Bouzereau's Star Wars: The Annotated Screenplays.]

One of the best parts about the whole debacle? The very first appearance of BOBA FETT in the hand drawn animated segment! SPOILER ALERT, but he’s described in the segment as Darth Vader’s “right hand man.” Crazy!

But to get to the Fett, you’ll have to endure tons of your average everyday Star Wars kinda stuff like Harvey Corman as a space age Julia Child, Art Carney just hanging out with some Wookies, Bea Arthur as a bartender in the Cantina, Jefferson Starship performing a musical number (get it STARSHIP?), Grandpa Wookie in his virtual-reality JO machine, etc.

The best part of all? Princess Leia sings the lyrics to the Star Wars theme song (who knew there were lyrics?) and she proves that not only is there no underwear in space, there was no GAFFER TAPE handy on the set of the Holiday Special. I love you you Carrie Fisher.

Please enjoy the video below or HERE. Thank goodness for bootlegs! I kind of hope you’ve never seen it, or you don’t believe me, because you are about to get your mind blown BIG TIME!

ANSWER: Yes, you should have phrased that as a question, but we are willing to let that go since you are interested in making a purchase. To “answer” your “question” we would love to see you pay us money to wear t-shirt with our logos on it. We here at HAPPY PRODUCT INC. know that humans like to purchase and wear t-shirts to advertise the branding of their favorite corporations and we would certainly not want to stop you from doing some free advertising for us. We will gladly sell you a t-shirt as soon as we have them in stock and as soon as we can figure out how much to charge you to lower your own self worth by using your human body as a billboard for our corporate interests. Check back or sign up for the Happy Product Mailing List for instant updates on all things HAPPY©. Thank you for your interest! The Corporation©.

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Seth Godin says: “There are three stages of preparation. (For a speech, a product, an interview, a sporting event…)

The first I’ll call the beginner stage. This is where you make huge progress as a result of incremental effort.

The second is the novice stage. This is the stage in which incremental effort leads to not so much visible increase in quality.

And the third is the expert stage. Here’s where races are won, conversations are started and sales are made. A huge amount of effort, off limits to most people, earns you just a tiny bit of quality. But it’s enough to get through the Dip and be seen as the obvious winner.

Here’s the myth: The novice stage is useful. If all you’re going to do is go through the novice stage before you ship, don’t bother. If you’re not prepared to put in the grinding work of the expert stage, just do the beginner stuff and stop screwing around. Make it good enough and ship it and move on.

We diddle around in the novice stage because we’re afraid. We polish (but not too much) and go to meetings (plenty of them) and look for deniability, spending hours and hours instead of shipping. And the product, in the end, is not so much better.

I’m all for expertise. Experts, people who push through and make something stunning–we need more of them. But let’s be honest, if you’re not in the habit of being an expert, it’s unlikely your current mode of operation is going to change that any time soon.

Go, give a speech. Go, start a blog. Go, ship that thing that you’ve been hiding. Begin, begin, begin and then improve. Being a novice is way overrated.”

• In summary, the HAPPY PRODUCT INC STATISTICAL ANALYSIS GENERATOR says: Just get going already, people are waiting to consume your product(s)and an imperfect product(s) is better than no product(s).

Link to the original article.

I just recently had the pleasure to see TESB on the big screen in honor of the 30th Anniversary (with a Harrison Ford Q+A afterwords!) and I was so happy to see that the movie I loved so much throughout my life holds up. I have so much affection for that movie because at 10 years old, I was perfectly primed to soak in everything that movie had to offer. I’m pretty sure I still believed it was all real and it became my religion even more than it had already been. I actaully got to hear Yoda teach Lunk the ways of the Force, so I was convinced I knew everything I needed Each movie had it’s own vibe and feel and as much as I love the first one, Empire and Kershner’s work within that universe is what firmly anchored that universe for me and turned a childhood joy into an obsession. Here are some images of him at work and a video clip to remember him by:

And here’s a nice interview I found today where he talks about his relationship with George Lucas:

And here’s a loving tribute to my most favorite toy from the entire movie franchise:

And you can buy the “Making Of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK” book HERE.

RIP.

That doesn’t seem so hard does it? Go innovate!

(but the HAPPY PRODUCT STATISTICAL PROCESSING ENGINE© believes that he could have been talking about short films as well):

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Follow these instructions and you should make lots of humans HAPPY©!

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age.

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

The HAPPY PRODUCT INC. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS GENERATOR says: Do not make broken product(s).

(From: The Stranger)

(Text is Nikki’s, the illustrations were generated by the HAPPY PRODUCT INC.’s STATISTICAL ANALYSIS ENGINE©)

A) An aversion to risk-taking which is a lingering byproduct of the recession and credit crunch. “Studio executives are always afraid of taking risks unless they can point to a big success,” said one writer’s agent. “If a Western did well, they’d want another Western, and they’d get a lot of bad Westerns.”

“Hey, let’s make a super hero movie!”

B) An over-reliance on “branded” properties that became prevalent over the last several years. Rights holders got first dollar gross deals and say over creative issues and release deadlines, even though they don’t know the first thing about making a good movie.

Rubik’s Cube the Movie – “This should work, right?”

C) The rise of one-step screenwriter deals and sweepstakes pitching (where multiple writers compete for a job by pitching ideas for the same assignment). Several writers admitted to me that when their priority is advancing to the next draft, originality goes out the window. They try to please studio executives and producers who thrive in a comfort zone of sameness.

“Don’t try anything fancy and artistic, just do what you are told.”

D) The growing influence of marketing executives in the selection of films that get made. Those executives favor films they know how to sell, which means films they’ve sold before.

“When marketing is in charge, things like this happen.”

The HAPPY PRODUCT INC STATISTICAL ANALYSIS GENERATOR concludes: Take risks, be original, keep your committee as small as possible and give the audience what it doesn’t know that it wants.

Read “As Toronto Unveils Inventive Oscar Films, Why Can’t Hollywood Prize Originality Too?“

MARK OSBORNE© suspects that in EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP Banksy pulls off the ultimate con. Or does he? Something is not quite legit about this, but you’ll be puzzling it out for days. It is from the mind of Bansky after all. Brilliantly executed, this doc is a true one of a kind filled with amazingly rare footage of street artists at work.

Banksy says:

“Graffiti’s always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off. I mean, most of it is just designed to look good from a moving vehicle. Not necessarily in the history books. But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit. I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

Check out more of Banksy’s own words on the film and street art in general HERE.

Buy the DVD HERE.

Geoff Boucher from the LA Times renders this amazing interview filled with tons of forehead slapping revelations that I think all of us Empire die-hards suspected or knew to be true in our hearts all along. Not to say that I didn’t love the toys as a kid, I sure did, but I didn’t know what the true cost of those toys was going to be.

Check out the full article (borrowed from LA Times HERO COMPLEX):

Did ‘Star Wars’ become a toy story? Producer Gary Kurtz looks back [Updated]
Aug. 12, 2010 | 12:00 p.m.

– Geoff Boucher

Wow. That’s all I can say. I would totally like to buy this man a beer.

This decision was determined by the HAPPY PRODUCT STATISTICAL PROCESSING ENGINE© as a very good thing for all parties. If all goes well, the movie will go on to make lots of humans very HAPPY©.* MARK OSBORNE© has always admired the book for its human insights and poetic storytelling, or something like that. Here is a picture of the book jacket taken from his private collection:

 Even though this book has a different title, #77OSB-25 promised THE CORPORATION that this was indeed the same book.

Here is how Variety reported the story:

‘Panda’ man picks ‘Prince’ project
Osborne will lead $63 million production
by Elsa Keslassy

“Kung Fu Panda” co-director Mark Osborne has been tapped to direct Gallic 3D toon “The Little Prince.”

One of the biggest European movies this year, with a budget of €45 million ($63.4 million), “Little Prince” is produced by Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam.

Pic is an adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s 1943 novella, which has sold more than 80 million copies in about 180 languages.

“Having Mark onboard gives the project an international label of quality: He brings in his storytelling talent and level of experience,” Rassam said.

Osborne’s involvement also underscores the producers’ ambition to “make ‘The Little Prince’ for worldwide audiences on a similar scale as Miyazaki’s and Hollywood films.”

“On ‘Kung Fu Panda,’ I worked with many French animators,” Osborne said. “I look forward to building on that experience and collaborating with French talents again.”

The producers are in the process of securing an international voice cast. Production will start in 2012 for delivery in 2014.

Soumache also is producing a $25.3 million toon skein based on “The Little Prince” via his TV shingle Method Animation.

The Gallic producers have two high-bracket pics in post-production: “Upside Down,” a $57 million sci-fi romance starring Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess, and “Prodigies,” a $54 million 3D motion-capture thriller.

 View original article HERE.

HAPPY PRODUCT STATISTICAL ANALYSIS GENERATOR© RESPONSE: Get a job, preferably in a factory where the tedium and boredom will inspire you to make use of your spare time.

MARK OSBORNE© HUMAN ANSWER: If you haven’t figured out a way to gather money to make your short, you haven’t been clever enough about making your short. Figure out how to make it for less money, figure out how to work with your friends, figure out how to work with the elements you have access to. Sometimes that will yield the most inventive and personal work, and that’s going to make your short stand out from the crowd. The best advice I ever got was “Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to make your films.” -

Human factory employee MARK OSBORNE© claims that THIS AMERICAN LIFE on NPR is probably the most consistently engaging and entertaining radio ever. Ira Glass was interviewed about what he’s learned about making such good radio and we here at the HAPPY PRODUCT CORPORATION found that almost all of it applies to story telling on film as well. Check these videos out for some excellent insight. Part #3 is by far the wisest bit of encouragement, where Mr. Glass explains the gap between your good taste and your ambition to do great things, and the tremendous amount of painful work that it takes to close that gap. Excellent advice.

Part 1 – The Basics of Storytelling

Part 2 – On Getting Started

Part 3 – On Good Taste

Part 4 – Beginner’s Pitfalls

To check out the radio show, go to THIS AMERICAN LIFE: www.thisamericanlife.org

The Corporation that created this music video has a website that can be found here: www.davidwilsoncreative.com

Apparently, this music video was created in only 20 days, a fact the HAPPY PRODUCT STATISTICAL PROCESSING ENGINE© finds staggering and impossible. Even the fastest factory workers under the most extreme conditions cannot turn out HAPPY PRODUCTS that quickly. Our analysis? The human that made this music video is lying. Either that or he is a very good and hard working factory worker with magical powers.

The Japanese Popstars Feat. Green Velvet – Let Go from David Wilson Creative on Vimeo.

Check out how the human behind the process, someone named David Wilson Creative, lies about how it was made. Either that or he is using some of his magic to glamour us.

Making Of… The Japanese Popstars – “Let Go” from David Wilson Creative on Vimeo.

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