Baby Got Your Back!

Ask yourself - Are you a bikini/lingerie model on a shoot? No? Suck it in!

Skinny Girls – please STOP sticking your asses out…

Look – no one is happier than me that “junk in the trunk” is a good thing now.  I suffered through high school in a time and place when Baby Got Back was a punch line making me the literal BUTT of most jokes. 

Shopping when you’re bootylicious?  Not much fun.  Skinny jeans will never be my friend, and Lycra spandex is a necessary fabric ingredient in anything that I plan on wearing below the waist. 

Here’s the kicker.  I grew up taking ballet lessons.  My keister juts out in spite of years of training to “pull up and tuck under.”  I have to engage my abs just fit between the closing doors on the subway. 

So imagine my confusion when I see all these perfectly lovely slender young women walking around in tight dresses sticking their butts and guts out on purpose! 

A) It’s bad for your back!  How can you tolerate walking around like that? It makes my sacrum ache just to look at you… and

B) It looks freakin’ ridiculous.  Sure, if I’m approaching you from your posterior, there is an illusion of booty.  But when I see your silhouette and realize your non-existent tummy is also bulging out the front, all I can do is shake my head.  Do you have ANY idea how hard girls like me work to flatten our abs in hopes to one-day fit into pencil skirts and tight dresses?  Any concept of how many crunches, flutter kicks and full-range sit ups I do daily to get at least one part of me to keep from bulging out of my clothes?  And you go and mock me by sticking out your tummy in order to pretend to have a bubble ass like mine?  It’s just not worth it.  I PROMISE you!

Stop! No! And Don't! Shame on this Photographer for making this gut appear!

In another five to ten years you’ll be sitting in a chiropractor’s office in tears because your hips are sore, your back always hurts and you’re adding pounds of weight every month because you can’t exercise anymore because your lower vertebrae are so screwed up.  And back issues cascade. By the time you seek medical help, it won’t be just your lower back.  It will be your shoulders, neck, hips, knees…

And what for?  To perpetuate a male fetish that comes and goes with the next Top-40 single?  To attract men on the street so you can yell at them when they catcall you?  To please a potential boyfriend who thinks ass-cheeks are more important than your cheeky personality?

Please – stand up straight!  Take some pride in the body your DNA crafted.  Enjoy wearing clothes that I’ll never be able to get one half of my tush into.  Yeah – we’re a shallow society and looks matter.  But luckily, everyone has different tastes.  And trying to look different just because it’s popular is NOT worth the pain down the road.  Suck in that gut and flaunt that skinny bod.  I would if I were you! ;)

Subway E-dick-ette for Men... (A Lil' Rant)

Men of NYC – your junk is NOT that big! 

I know you think it is.  I know you look down at yourself in the shower every morning and think, “Woah! My anaconda is enormous!  And look at those two boulders it’s hanging between.  Damn!  I better make sure to always make plenty of room for its serpentine majesty.”

So naturally, when you sit down on the subway – or even on a bench in the subway station – you feel justified in spreading your legs as far apart as your groin muscles will allow – just to make sure the massive elephant trunk dangling above your nads has room to swing freely.

Unless you ACTUALLY look like this...

Meanwhile – you’re taking up twice as much room as any given woman on the subway – including the ones who weigh more than you!  I’ve seen very large ladies squeeze their knees together, straighten their posture and somehow slenderize by a couple inches on each side in order to accommodate a fellow passenger who would like a seat. 

But you men and your giant ball-sacks – you don’t even look up from that epic game of Bubble Witch you’re playing on your iPhone that you’re holding down in the cradle of the obtuse angle formed from where your legs meet your scrotum.

Here’s a reality check.  When a well-dressed woman walks on the train, looks around, zeros in on you and murmurs under her breath, “What a huge dick,” she’s not referring reverently to your member.  She’s cursing the fact that she has to stand there with her laptop from the office and try to balance in high heels on a moving train all the way to Jamaica because you’re taking up two full seats, leaving her without a place to sit.

...don't sit like THIS!

If your boy bits really need that much room, you should be standing – because the stability afforded from your tripod gives you distinct advantage…

Thank you for your understanding in this matter! 

Hillary J.

Festival Sumbissions Pt. III - KISS me - Please!

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It’s time to come clean on shorts…

Notice, festivals never ask you to submit your ‘clam-diggers’ for competition.  There is not a ‘capri pant’ category.  The industry phrase is ‘Short Films.’   Short. 

What is ‘short?’ 

“Oooh!  I got this one,” you say – raising your arm high and waving it around with the same spastic energy of a fishing reel that’s snagged an Alaskan King salmon in the throes of spawning season.  “A short film is any film under an hour – OR whatever the maximum time allotment is on your WAB requirement page.  Suck it! Yeah!  High fives all around!”

You’re right – kind of.  Many festivals allow ‘short film’ submissions up to 60 minutes in length with 60 or 61 minutes being the bridge into what is considered the ‘feature film’ category.

“So my movie is 45 minutes long.  It’s a short!  See?  Easy-peasy!”

Not exactly.  See, at the end of the day, when programming a film festival, long shorts are frequently the first to get cut. 

“No fair!  You just said they could be up to 60 minutes long and mine’s only 45!  Why would you say that if you don’t mean it?”

It’s not that we don’t mean it.  Scheduling usually breaks into two-hour blocks, which allow time for a typical feature film to be introduced, screened and then followed up with a Q&A.  So shorts are usually divided up into thematic ‘Shorts Programs’ that will fit inside that same two-hour window with time for a brief intro and a discussion to follow. 

“So you’ve still got another 45 – 65 minutes of runtime in that slot.  What’s the problem?”

True.  But by and large we get a very high volume of very good short films.  So the problem is your 45-minute short needs to be BETTER than FOUR to FIVE other shorts of a similar theme to program it.  And I have more disheartening news.  In most cases, a 45-minute short (or any short over 25 minutes usually) is not tight enough to make the cut. 

Remember all those things I cautioned about in my first blog?  Pacing, economy of visual storytelling, montage abuse?  More often than not, long shorts are chief offenders.  They don’t enter scenes as late as possible.  They don’t get out before it gets boring.  They take too long with slow-moving artistic camera angles that don’t propel the story.

“You just don’t understand my art!” you say, closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears.  “La, la, la, la – I can’t hear youuuuu!”

Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I don’t understand your art.  But most of us on these committees are here because we love film, and we have an especially soft spot for indie film.  We WANT to see ‘cutting edge.’  We WANT to program films that make us think and give us something to talk about afterward.  But we don’t want the Q&A to be, “What the hell was that movie even supposed to be about?  I don’t understand the point!”  And even if I ‘get’ what your trying to do, if there are other films that do it better, yours won’t get programmed. 

Sure there are a few exceptions when it comes to long shorts – and they’re almost ALL documentaries.  Docs are unique animals that are afforded a little more fluidity.  But a programmed 45-minute doc will never feel like it’s 45 minutes long.

“So what do I do with this killer 45-page script I wrote?”

Trim the fat.  Turn it into a super-tight 8 – 20 minute script.  Or flesh it out.  Add a B-story and make it a full-blown feature film.  But please, Please, PLEASEmake sure you get some money and few decent actors before you shoot it!  (Coming soon in another blog.)  The bulk of 25-plus-minute narrative shorts feel underdeveloped or under edited.  Work on making something AMAZING in 10 minutes or less. 

I mean, think about it – would you rather see a great pair of legs in capri pants or Daisy Dukes? 

‘Nough said!

A Bad Reputation...

It's a gamble.

But then, all forward thinking is.

For my class this month, I committed to posting three YouTube Videos as a character I played in my first feature Film ACTION!!!

The thing is, not only does the character look like me - she has my name!  In the interest of making a three-day mostly improvised shoot as simple as possible, I encouraged all the actors to use their own names, and I led by example.  Please don't be fooled by the girl you see in the monitor.  She bears very little resemblance to 'real life' Hillary J.  Besides - 12-step meetings are for quitters!!!