<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Chaotic Sequence Inc.</title><link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/rss.php</link><description>News and Info from Independent Film Production Company Chaotic Sequence Inc.</description>
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				<copyright>Copyright 2012 Chaotic Sequence, Inc.</copyright>
				<pubDate>Sat, 19 May 2012 01:49:53 -0700</pubDate>
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							<title>Blogging on <em>Found In Time</em></title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=45</link>
							<description><![CDATA[Since most of the work I&#39;m doing these days has to do with Found In Time, I&#39;ve decided to focus my blogging efforts on that site instead of trying to maintain two blogs.  You can still grab my older entries from the list below, but if you want minty-fresh content, head over to the Found In Time site - FoundInTimeFilm.com.  When post starts to wrap up, I&#39;ll return to posting in two places.  Enjoy and as always, please send me your feedback.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-10-10 10:58:31</pubDate>
							<category>Film</category> 
							<category>Filmmaking</category> 
							<category>Film Budgeting</category> 
							<category>Film Producing</category> 
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							<title>Looking At Mediocre Movies</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=44</link>
							<description><![CDATA[Way back in the stone age, when I was starting to pick up HTML and CSS, I looked at a lot of websites to learn good web design.  The problem is that looking at a well-designed site doesn&#39;t really tell you much, since (ideally) the user experience is seamless.  Enter the brilliant WebPagesThatSuck.com, a great teaching aid.  It really is possible to learn good design by looking at bad design.  As an aside, I find that about half of the film agent, manager, cast, crew, vendor, and production company sites I&#39;ve visited this year (and that&#39;s a LOT) suck.  All apples-to-oranges comparisons aside, if you can&#39;t communicate clearly in a static, relatively inexpensive medium, why should I do business with you in a fast-paced, capital-intensive one?
Likewise, you can learn a lot from looking at films that don&#39;t quite work.  It&#39;s also a rather empowering experience.  When I see The Seventh Seal or Dark Knight or Stalker, I think &quot;why should I bother making movies, I can&#39;t compete.&quot;  When I see one of the films below, I think &quot;maybe I have a chance.&quot;]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-06-04 05:59:46</pubDate>
							<category>Film</category> 
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							<title>How NOT to Screw Your Sound Editor</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=43</link>
							<description><![CDATA[I realize I&#39;ve been doing &quot;big picture&quot; blog entries lately, and thought it might be good to hone in on an area where independent film folks often get into trouble: post sound.  This is w-a-a-a-y too big an area to cover completely in one blog entry.  But here are some thoughtful tips on how to plan for sound post.
Format Your Script Correctly
Sound verbs should be in all CAPs.  This helps your sound editor figure out what s/he needs to look for in your audio, and what s/he needs to provide if it&#39;s not there.  Make sure your scenes begin and end in one location - if you change locations, that&#39;s a new scene.  Use INTERCUT for phone conversations.  This is all really basic stuff, but about 80% of the scripts I budget are not shoot-ready in this regard.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-05-05 14:31:22</pubDate>
							<category>Film</category> 
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							<title>When Common Sense Makes No Sense</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=42</link>
							<description><![CDATA[I&#39;ve been thinking a lot lately about certain &quot;every day&quot; concepts and sayings as they apply to the realm of film production.  That&#39;s a pretty broad topic that has the potential for a great deal of navel-gazing.  I&#39;ll keep most of the less productive thoughts to myself and pass along a few practical insights.  The last blog entry was targeted at producers; this one is probably more applicable to people who are starting out.
Balance
Eat a balanced diet... everything in moderation... strike a happy medium... balance is the key... balance your budget... the list of things you&#39;re supposed to balance is pretty much endless.  You can easily go crazy trying to balance your life.  Many of my friends do.  I&#39;m not innocent here, either - I neurotically count calories, weigh and measure calories vs. exercise, worry that I spend too much time in front of the computer, etc.
But balance is not a goal, but the result of a process.  Ask an actor to &quot;be sad&quot; and you&#39;re asking for a result direction.  Try it yourself.  It&#39;s impossible to do effectively.  Instead, try thinking about a person you loved and lost - to a breakup, or sickness, or death.  Odds are you&#39;ll feel pretty damn sad pretty fast.  Balance is the same thing.  It&#39;s not something you can &quot;play&quot;.  Your bookcase is balanced because it was built to carry a load of books without tilting over.  Even so you probably had to put index cards under it (especially if you live in New York, where the concept of level floors and walls don&#39;t exist).  For something to be balanced, it has to be motionless (or move so slightly as to be effectively motionless).  Every time you take a step you unbalance yourself.  On a moment-to-moment basis, you will experience something in your life that will cause you to swing out of equilibrium (balance).
Especially if you plan on directing or producing a film, you can&#39;t try to live a balanced existence.  Instead, try to live a focused one.  Put a small number of goals together.  Work towards fulfilling them.  Plan.  Build momentum.  Obsess.  Trust that if you veer too far down the path, other forces in your life will constructively pull you back from the brink.  Your spouse, kids, pets, friends, coworkers - they will rightfully complain if you neglect them too much.  You can then refocus on them.  But don&#39;t try to serve them all equally at once.  You will lose out, your projects will lose steam, and you will be unhappy - which will, in turn, make your spouse, kids, pets, friends, and coworkers unhappy.

This is not a license to make a mess out of your life.  That is the ultimate in unfocused thinking.  A focused person is ultimately more effective (though possibly not as nice to be around) as a balanced person.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-03-30 07:38:44</pubDate>
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							<title>The 5 Most Annoying Things I've Heard Producers Say</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=41</link>
							<description><![CDATA[I often feel that I inhabit three different personas.  There&#39;s the happy-to-be-alive, creative person, who&#39;s excited about working in film, tries to see the brighter side of life, and is probably insufferable to be around.  Then there&#39;s the salty, bitter, but organized line producer, who&#39;s tired of slogging it out in the independent film world for little money and less reward.  Both personas wrestle for control with the geek who loves to take stuff apart, learn new programming languages, play with Photoshop for hours, and be a mini-MacGyver (&#39;look, I fixed a fan that originally cost me 10 dollars&#39;).
This week it&#39;s the salty dog&#39;s turn, to talk about the five most annoying phrases uttered by producers.  You have been warned.
I just need a topsheet budget
Every so often I get asked to do this.  Just &quot;assemble a topsheet&quot; without doing a script breakdown or detail-level budget.  It&#39;ll take less time and cost us less money, right?  Wrong.  A film budget is meaningless unless it&#39;s been built from the bottom up, detail-by-detail.  These detail-level costs are only arrived at after breaking down and scheduling the script, researching costs (or will be shot in), talking to the director, producers, and other involved parties... in other words, doing work.  A lot of producers are broke at the beginning of the process, and so it&#39;s tough for them to cough up my fee.  But ask yourself this: would you NOT hire an engineer to make sure the architect&#39;s plan for your dream house can actually be built?  Would you risk putting in bad numbers, and thereby potentially place your project, your investors - your future career - in jeopardy?]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-03-01 18:53:50</pubDate>
							<category>Film</category> 
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							<title>Refresh Your Brain</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=40</link>
							<description><![CDATA[Call it the Tarantino Syndrome: you work on movies all day.  All your friends work on movies, or have a script on their computer (or both).  You go to the movies on your day off.  After a few years, you can&#39;t help quoting movies to each other, while your (increasingly scarce) non-film friends (or those who&#39;ve had children and only watch "Bob the Builder" or "Spongebob" or "Sesame Street" anymore) look at you like you&#39;re nuts.
It&#39;s not a wonder that films sometimes resemble nothing so much as faded copies of other movies, just like the ones of certain jokes or newsclips you used to make when you worked in an office.  (I used to work in a copy shop, I know).  If you feel like your script is stale or references other movies too much, try reaching outside the film world a bit for inspiration/research.  [Disclaimer: I love Tarantino.  But... you know what I mean.]]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-02-16 23:05:45</pubDate>
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							<title>One Decade Down</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=39</link>
							<description><![CDATA[It started with a dot.com bust and ended with a healthcare reform bill whimper.  In between has been two mismanaged wars, a completely avoidable economic crisis, political backsliding, and an erasure of whatever optimism we arrived in the twentieth century with.
Across the world, everything&#39;s gotten at least a little worse than it was in 2000.  Poverty, the degrading environment, the boom-and-bust cycles of unchecked capitalism, religious fanaticism, the oppression of women, intolerance to diversity in race/creed/belief... we&#39;re heading towards another world war, but it will be fought on a million fronts, in an uncoordinated way, and it will not be over nation-states&#39; territorial issues, but basic human rights. ]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2010-01-05 08:23:23</pubDate>
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							<title>Great Online Resources</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=38</link>
							<description><![CDATA[When cats and stop-motion animation mix.
For the past few months I&#39;ve been collecting websites that I keep meaning to include in some kind of &quot;shout-out&quot; blog entry.  Between working on a couple of budgets and taking time out for turkey day, I haven&#39;t come up with an entire blog&#39;s-worth of new ideas, so I thought I&#39;d talk about other people&#39;s stuff instead.
Film Specific, launched by Stacey Parks (who I don&#39;t think sleeps, ever).  Distribution is usually the last thing on filmmakers&#39; minds, to their (and their investors&#39;, family&#39;s, friends&#39;, and pets&#39;) detriment.  You should at least have some kind of plan on paper for how you&#39;re going to bring in the shekels for your masterpiece.  Enter Film Specific.  You will find a cornucopia of articles, seminars, video how-to&#39;s, resources, merch, and more that will help guide your film from idea to screen.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-12-03 02:09:53</pubDate>
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							<title>The Screen Actors Guild, A Love Story</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=37</link>
							<description><![CDATA[It&#39;s been a little while since I covered any film business-type stuff on the blog.  So I thought I&#39;d talk about the gotchas that can occur when dealing with the one guild you&#39;re likely to deal with even on a short film: the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).  I&#39;m actually happy that SAG exists, because without them, actors would be completely at the mercy of producers.  Having said that, I think there is room for improvement in the way that SAG treats its members and producers.  So rather than make this into an extended bitch session, I&#39;d like to offer some thoughts on how the &quot;SAG process&quot; could be improved upon.
The Paperwork
SAG has gotten better about putting more of its paperwork online, but even so, much of it still has to be filled out by hand (many of the PDFs are locked or scans).  Also, there is tremendous data duplication - I have to fill out the same name, company, address, contact info, etc. on about a half-dozen forms just to get started.  This can&#39;t be good for anyone, including the poor guys at SAG who have to key all this stuff into their computers.  The NYC Mayor&#39;s Office has fill-in PDF forms.  Other municipalities don&#39;t even require you to walk in - just fill everything out online and print out your permit once it&#39;s been approved.  Even the U.S. Copyright office has gotten into the act.  So why not SAG?]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-11-06 15:39:07</pubDate>
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							<title>Making The Prayer Tree</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=36</link>
							<description><![CDATA[So as luck would have it, the film I was going to do a how-to on, The Prayer Tree, got into two film festivals - the International Poetic Short Film Festival,  running Monday evenings at the Nuyorican Poet&#39;s Cafe, with a different lineup of poetic shorts each night; and the Seguin Arts and Film Festival in Seguin, Texas.  So here&#39;s a not-so-brief rundown on how the short came to be.  Hopefully it&#39;ll serve as an inspiration, if nothing else.
Starting Without An Idea
Usually, I do things the way you&#39;re supposed to: I come up with an idea for a story, write down a premise, expand it into an outline, then write a few drafts of the script.  At the end of this grueling process, I have a script that&#39;s well-formed and tight.  Apart from the fact that this process can drain most of the fun out of writing, it also tends to make me think in a certain way.  So I wanted to do something more like collage - start with pieces and see if I could still a story together out of them.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-10-21 01:03:04</pubDate>
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							<title>Matter Screens at BWAC</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=35</link>
							<description><![CDATA[Matter, a short film produced by Chaotic Sequence, will screen TOMORROW, October 10, at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coaltion (BWAC) New Vision Screening Series.  About a dozen new shorts and longer works will screen at the gallery space in Red Hook. The show starts at 3pm.
Directions: 499 Van Brunt St. Red Hook, Brooklyn
F or G train to Smith-9th, then #77 bus to Van Brunt
Gallery is in warehouse across from the Fairway
Visit Matter&#39;s official page, or BWAC&#39;s website.

]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-10-09 09:08:37</pubDate>
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							<title>The Prayer Tree Premieres</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=33</link>
							<description><![CDATA[The Prayer Tree, a new short that layers stills, sketches, and video, will premiere at the International Poetic Short Film Festival! Screening on Monday, October 5th, 8pm, at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe - 236 E. Third St., btw. Ave. B and Ave. C, in New York City)!

Arthur Vincie will be on hand for a brief Q & A afterwards. The festival will run every Monday in October and features a diverse, rich collection of shorts from around the globe. See you there!]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-09-29 01:29:12</pubDate>
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							<title>Staying Creative on the Cheap</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=32</link>
							<description><![CDATA[Over the past several blog entries, I&#39;ve talked about how to approach filmmaking from a business point of view.  But it&#39;s important to remember that this is fundamentally a creative endeavor.  I forget this all the time.  Even my own scripts start to look like just so many widgets I&#39;ve got to sell.
There&#39;s absolutely nothing wrong with thinking this way - it&#39;s good to be practical, and think of your work in terms of a larger marketplace.  But it&#39;s also important to nourish your creative side, even if you work in a non-creative capacity.  Though truthfully, even assistant directors, production assistants, and line producers have to be creative when trying to solve problems. But creativity is a muscle - stop exercising it and it atrophies.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-09-18 22:29:42</pubDate>
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							<title>The Sky is NOT Falling, Part 2</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=31</link>
							<description><![CDATA[I was told that I needed more pictures in my blog, so here you go.   This has nothing to do with the blog, but it&#39;s pretty to look at.
So, last time I was talking about how things looked worse than they really are.  I then promised to stagger you with my psychic prognostications for the film and television industry.  Well, here goes nothing]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-08-29 09:48:24</pubDate>
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							<title>The Sky is NOT Falling, Part 1</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=30</link>
							<description><![CDATA[Indie producers tell you that they can&#39;t get their projects off the ground.  Hollywood heavy-hitters like James Cameron think it&#39;s very difficult.  Everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Filmmaker Magazine seems to think that there&#39;s no business model for indie films anymore.Well, here&#39;s a reality check on all that, from a very specific perspective (a New York-based line producer).]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-08-04 08:29:17</pubDate>
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							<title>Does the Nano-Budget Film Still Exist, Part II</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=28</link>
							<description><![CDATA[So in the last blog entry I talked about the impossibility of trying to make the &quot;next El Mariachi&quot.  How costs have changed since then, how there was a substantial amount of hype surrounding its budget (and those of films like it), etc.
Now I&#39;m going to try and sprinkle in some good news: you can still make a nano-budget film.  Here are a few tips that can help you get there:]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-07-11 14:50:14</pubDate>
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							<title>Does The Nano-Budget Film Still Exist, Part I</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=24</link>
							<description><![CDATA[By now, indie filmmakers have a memorized list of miraculous films: Laws of Gravity, Clerks, Blood Guts Bullets and Octane, In The Company of Men, El Mariachi, The Blair Witch Project, Tadpole, Primer. Films that were made on guts, passion, with tiny crews and schedules, that used energy and dialogue in place of big-budget sets and effects, yadda yadda yadda. Often when sitting down with a first-time director to budget his/her film, I get exhored to model my budget on these films.  I then have to patiently explain to her why these &quot;models&quot; are flukes, exaggerations, or outright lies, and how no sane line producer (or producer or director) would use them as the basis for a realistic budget.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-06-13 00:00:00</pubDate>
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							<title>The Production Gestalt</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=23</link>
							<description><![CDATA[The first question I ask when I&#39;m looking at line producing a film is, of course, "what&#39;s my rate."  The second question, however, is "what&#39;s the gestalt of this project." This seems to be the same thing as "what&#39;s the budget," but it&#39;s not.In fact, I had a hard time figuring out how to concisely define gestalt in the context of filmmaking.  Essentially, it boils down to the following: the combination of the director and producer(s)&#39; experience, plus the script&#39;s story, plus the budget, plus the approach of both the director and producer towards fiscal and creative issues, plus the attitude of the crew and cast, equals the gestalt of the production.  Sort of.]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-05-29 18:20:33</pubDate>
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							<title>It's All About the Footprint</title>
							<link>http://www.chaoticsequence.com/blog.php?storyID=21</link>
							<description><![CDATA[We&#39;re a visual species.  What we don&#39;t see usually gets filed away into some back-storage area in our brains, only to be recalled when it rears its head again - when it becomes visible.  This explains why we&#39;re great at pattern recognition, hockey and chess.  It also explains why, when we can translate the invisible into the visible (through technology, meditation, or some combination of the two), we are very good at figuring things out.  It also explains why we suck at maintaining our houses and cars, and why inexperienced producers don&#39;t think beyond the set - the visible world of the filmmaking.
I&#39;m talking about footprint.  You&#39;re shooting all day in the park.  The producer thinks, great, I&#39;ve got a free location - just get the permit, talk to the parks department, and I&#39;m set.  But where do people go to the bathroom?  Where do they park?  Where do you send the crew and cast when they&#39;re not needed?  Where do you eat lunch?  Where do you stage your equipment?  In other words - what&#39;s the REAL FOOTPRINT of your shoot?]]>... </description>
							<author>Arthur Vincie / Chaotic Sequence Inc.</author>
							<pubDate>2009-05-15 01:43:04</pubDate>
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