Three clips from Time of the Robots

Here are three clips from Time of the Robots for your viewing pleasure,

1. The opening three minutes of the film:


Time of the Robots - opening three minutes from Erik Hammen on Vimeo.

2. Marta escapes from the Phantom Planet


Time of the Robots - clip 2- Marta escapes from the Phantom Planet from Erik Hammen on Vimeo.

3. The Primordial Strike!


Time of the Robots - clip 3 - the Primordial Strike from Erik Hammen on Vimeo.

Sure you've seen Metropolis, but have you seen...

I'm in the middle of trying to get settings right on various types of software so I can upload some clips of Time of the Robots, and frankly it's not going very smoothly. In the meantime, I think I'll start posting some brief reviews of silent films that I think people might like but that generally do not fall into the standard Silent  canon. Here's the first.


1. The Student of Prague (1926 version).  This is the one with Conrad Veidt (of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and many, many other films).  It really is a masterpiece of mood, German Expressionism, and all around Mittle Europe weirdness. Standout shots include the Devil on a hill with a single craggy tree, and the gigantic shadows and double exposures that director Henrik Galeen uses to fine, menacing effect.

It takes a little while to get going, but the real fun begins once the Devil shows up, determined to strike a bargain with Veidt's student -- a master swordsman and all around Gentleman. However, the Student is also the poorest student of the group, and he pines after a rich woman, whom the Devil puts in his path and then offers a small bargain in exchange for riches. A crucial subplot includes a second woman, a very sympathetic character who is jealous of the Student's arrangement brought about by his new riches.

A few words on Art in the Public Domain

image from the film Cabria (1914)

Time of the Robots was created using primarily works in the public domain.  The intent was similar to how artists such as Cathy Acker, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and JX Williams  used existing images to create a wholly original work.

People like to bandy about the phrase public domain like a shuttlecock on a warm summer day, but hands up how many people actually know what it means, in terms of music and motion pictures? Well folks, if you or your loved ones are planning on making serious art using works in the public domain, (fooling around on youtube doesn't count) read on for some amateur* guidelines to the public domain, based on my own extensive research, and a few sessions with the very fine group Washington Lawyers for the Arts.


Motion pictures dated before 1925 are in the public domain.

That means that you can use part of all of that motion picture, in any form, for anything you want -- with the following, very big exceptions!

1. You can not use the soundtrack music separately.
You can't simply use music from a film as music alone. If it's part of your use of the film, that's okay though. (more on music in a bit)

2. You can't use images of the actors outside the context of the movie for publicity purposes.
So you can't print a big frame of, say, Bela Lugosi from "The Bowery at Night" and use that image to sell cigarettes. Or to sell your own artwork that incorporates that movie. Because that's using an actor's likeness, and the rights of people NOT to have publicity supersede the rights of the public to public domain works.

3. Some movies made after 1925 are in the public domain.
There were a series of copyright deadlines, I won't go into the details here, but at a few junctures in history studios and producers were obligated to renew the copyright or let the film lapse into public domain. This was before the age of video, so many many pictures that had their mediocre run were simply believed to have used up their value, so why bother? Whatever the reason, there are loads of post-1925 movies in the public domain, including many (but not all!) serials, and many (but definitely not all) cult classic type movies such as Night of the Living Dead.

How to tell?
One indicator if the movie is in public domain or not is whether a low-cost DVD distributer such as Alpha Video carries them for $5.95. But that's no guarantee.

Another resource, also not 100% reliable in terms of legality, is the moving pictures section of archive.org.

The only way to know for sure is to have it researched at the Library of Congress. You can't necessarily rely on online information, the only legal way is either to go in to the actual place in person and have a librarian help you find the information, or you can hire them for something like $80 per movie to do it for you and mail you the results. For Time of the Robots, I worked with Elias Savada, who runs a service that does the research for about half what the Library charges. Folks like Alpha Video use him for their own verification, and I found it extremely helpful (and expedient!)

Actual research will unearth gems of information such as: the first two Flash Gordon serials (Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars) are not in the public domain, but the cheapo "feature films" that studio made by editing all 14 episodes of each serial down to 80 minutes, are in the public domain. The third Flash Gordon serial (Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe) is also in the public domain in its entirety."


In the next entry on this topic, I will talk about the public domain in relation to recorded music.
(short version: almost no recorded music is in the public domain, no matter how old)

*this content is not meant to be any sort of legal advice. Obviously. Come on!

More information coming very soon

I tell ya, this blog thing is going to be chock full of interesting, snappy information very... very... soon!

This weekend I'll be posting clips from the film.

Time of the Robots on imdb.com

Update: the film is now on imdb.com.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070877/

That makes it serious, man!

Trailer thinking

Time of the Robots is an unusual film in that being created using parts of other films, when I've tried to make a trailer in the past it simply looks like a montage of film clips, not like a coherent piece.
And that undercuts the whole idea I'm trying to assert: which is that TOTR is the result of a powerhouse drive of writing, editing and composing.
Right?

Maybe not.

The last time I tried to make a trailer I was still using exclusively public domain music for the film, and since then I've ended up scoring about 2/3 of the film with original music.
I lay awake last night thinking about this, and it came to me that maybe I can use a combination of titles, strategically chosen clips, and my music, maybe I can drum up a cool little trailer.

I'll try this out in the next week or so. It'll probably take longer than I think to do it.

But it'd sure be nice to have a trailer or teaser of some short to POST online.

We'll see.

FINISHED

I finished my absolute final edits on Time of the Robots last night, and a previewable DVD it is now ready to go to film festivals, beginning with entry to Sundance tomorrow morning.

It is a typical "Indian Summer" in Seattle today, hot and humid in September after a very weak summer during the actual summer months. The window is wide open and the air smells of smoke from the bonfires people are holding on the beach nearby. The smell is sort of nice, but the air is very thick and there's a toxic, choking element to the smell as well.
But that's neither here nor there...

As much as I like to do things at home, my own (cheap) way, I ended up going to a big post house in town to get my final DVD made.  I had been making them on my computer, but it seemed like the old thing was straining under the stress of converting the FCP files to Quicktime then compressing them then burning them to DVD, and that stress was affecting the film (I think that's what it was, it's hard to prove either way).

The problem was that I could not rely on the film coming out at extactly the right playing speed each time I made a new DVD. This was a major, major problem, so I talked to my friend Apple expert Gordon Modin about this, and he thought it might be there was not enough free RAM.
I unloaded a bunch of things to my portable harddrive, but still... it was still a bit shaky.

So I decided to invest in a little pro treatment with Modern Digital.

It was totally worth it. I stopped sweating immediatly after I heard they could squeeze me in.

I registered the project on Withoutabox (imdb) and goes to Fed Ex first thing tomorrow morning, for Monday delivery at Sundance.

And then, we shall see what people think of my little space opera.

Status: September

Ah yes, more time passes and more minutia is gone over and over again.
I've spent the last few months getting the rhythm back in the film, and trying to trim some fat off it.
For example, I quickened up the bit on the boat.
I moved the Mercury intro to the BEGINNING of the film.
I also removed a whole scene where Fritz fights a dragon beneath the hell pit. That was a good scene but it slowed things down at a crucial point.

But the main thing I've been sweating about has been the first 10 minutes or so -- getting it to be clock-tight but also say what I want to say, etc.  In this process, I accidentally came up with a cool Groton Bridge Films logo for the very beginning of the film.

It has been a very hectic week for work/home life so I had a few days off the film, last night started late, stayed up very late with the intent to make sure the scene transitions were working properly so I can do a watch-through in peace this weekend. I think this time it'll be good.
I'm also swearing off making ANY more changes to the initial landing shot on the Planet, it's driving me nuts and ever time I change it, it's not much better than the last time. It currently "works", and I don't want to miss the drop dead Sundance deadline because of that stupid transition.
So it goes.

Status: July 2011

I viewed an updated version of the film at the end of June and while the changes were excellent, the delicate rhythm of the film has been thrown off, and there were techincal issues such as the brightness of the tinting and the title lettering, and the audio levels, that I also need to address.

Currently I am working on the pacing - the most important part I think. I've been trimming scenes a bit to both move things along and avoid using blackouts, which I think were giving the film a start/stop quality in the last viewing, especially in the beginning, which is crucial in establishing that this unusual film IS worth watching, and that I am doing something good.

I'm still hoping to have a copy ready by the Sundance deadline, for what it's worth, but I've said that every year since I started.

update

Time of the Robots was previewed for an audience of about 30 in November and I am making final edits and adjustments. It will be ready for release to the festival market later in 2011.

In the meantime, I've finished a short film, The Last City in the East, which is premiering at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival on April 19, 2011.