An article was just published in issue #54 of Indie Slate magazine written by yours truly. Go pick up a copy at Borders or Barnes and Noble. I have a subscription, so I might have it before it hits newsstands. Or you can just check it out here! I bet you'd like the actual magazine in your hands though. It features pictures of Brian Wayne, Brandon Dolgner, Leya Czopek, Michael Colin, JT Campos(his backside) and me. I can now officially say I am a published writer in a national magazine. Yay!

It's even on the cover(in smallish print on the lower right-hand side).

As far as I am concerned, the DVD is done. Dave and I finished up the final sound mix on Wednesday of last week and I encoded the sound onto the movie and squeezed it all onto Disc 1 of the 2-DVD set. I will start printing DVDs out and getting them in the mail. If anyone involved in the movie ever reads this page, send me your address so I'm not sending it to an old address. I will send out emails as well so everyone is informed.

First off, I've created a short video on how I put all the layers together in one shot out of the movie. It's set to be part of a new Editor reel I'm putting together. Enjoy.

I wrote an artice about the making of Ungirlfriendable and how it came about that I cam up with the idea for the sole purpose of sending it into Indie Slate Magazine to be a part of a section in the magazine called "Reel Life," which allows filmmakers to write in about their project and maybe get a little recognition. I sent the article in and here is the response I got from the editor:

Thanks for submitting your "Reel Life" story, Jeffry. I have placed it in cue for a future issue, possibly #54 (projected to publish June 2008) or #55 (projected to publish August 2008).

So keep an eye on newsstands folks. They sell the magazine at Borders and Barnes and Noble.

Just today I exported yet another version of the film and it's ready to be put on a DVD so I can check it out on my big TV. I added filters and such and hopefully it will be for the better. Dave is still working on the sound and we have come up with the deadline of March 31st to finish it all up. Hopefully I can now honestly say I'll be sending out DVDs in April.

Oh man! What a weekend. All the emotions were had. The theme we received on Thursday night was "The Future," and the surprise element was "Action: Painting." Calls were made and the thinking began. I finally got to my destination in Houston on Friday night at about 7pm. We went through many ideas and decided upon the style being a 1950s PSA. The original location fell through Thursday as one of our members had to all but drop out of the proceedings because they had to work on Saturday. We only had the location on the contention that the person be there at all times to make the location owner feel better about all these strange people in her house.

Dickie Malone, a generous song contributor to Ungirlfriendable and cousin to my best friend Klint, came through in the pinch. He had emailed me a few weeks prior offering up his services to write a song or music for one of my movies in the future. I said I would be in his town of Houston this weekend and he might contribute a song to the cause if he so pleased. Not only did he provide the one piece of music used, but he provided a virtual goldmine of a location for us to use at our discretion. Dickie's brother owns a shopping center that has a few closed down shops and we were given free reign to use whatever properties we wanted and were offered to use any of the people working there as well. I will say that we didn't use it all to our advantage. We had huge spaces in which to work and so many opportunities to get quite an eclectic cast in the movie.

My mind wasn't on the project 100%. I won't even get started as to where it was, but the people involved in the project know where it was. Lots of ideas were thrown into the pot. We shot quite a bit of stuff. Actually, we only shot about an hour's worth of footage, but it was all pretty good stuff. It's a good thing we didn't have a ton of footage that I'd have to widdle down to five minutes. I did get it down to just that, exactly 5 minutes. In fact, I put a marker on the timeline in the editing program to show 5 minutes and had to make sure the credits ended there. We had to lose one of the products, "Crud away." It will be up as a deleted scene sometime this week. Maybe. Sorry Liz. She even shaved her forearm for the bit.

Also, check out my new short spoof. My boss wanted to put together a spoof of this guy in Arizona who did 219 mph in a Lamborghini on the highway. My version uses the same audio with newly shot footage and some creative additions.

The original video clip can be found HERE.

My version is here:

I put up my movie posters on my office wall...

And it's my b-day. 32 years old. Woooo. I thought I'd start off with my favorite pics. Kinda sad, but true. The start of the screening and end of the screening shot:

I made some copies of the movie and sold 3 copies! Wooo. Still way in the red! I wore my shirts and got some stares. First thing Shawn told me was that I needed to get it silkscreened. Duh! The best of show, best Asheville film and audience award went to Asheville people. Don't blame 'em. I was the outsider. I should have gotten the "farthest travelled" award. The California guy didn't show up. One guy, Bubba, had a film about Bigfoot, hence the Bigfoot statue, which, oddly enough, was in the Skymall magazine on the airplane.

Can't wait 'til the next fest. I'm hoping the next one is closer and I'll get to drag along one of the cast members. In two weeks, it's 100-hour film race time! Yay!

I am back from my trip to Asheville, NC. It was a weekend of meeting lots of folks and drinking lots of beers. I have to give a shout out to John Bennett and Shawn Lukitsch, the guys who started the Asheville "Rejects" Film Festival and run Agency Films. They were both very supportive and they really get out their and push their projects and stand behind the artists they put in their fest. I felt very welcome and enjoyed shooting the shit with those guys. It was also a pleasure to meet Lloyd Kaufman, if just for a few brief minutes. I didn't want to monopolize his time with mundance questions, of which I had none. He did put me on camera to talk about my film and being part of a "rejects" film festival, as he is putting together a supplemental DVD for his "Make Your Own DAMN Movie" DVD tutorial called "Make Your Own DAMN Film Festival." That was nifty. That guy is a trooper, sticking it out for 40 years making films, 35 years with Troma. He's a true independent. I'll have pics from the fest up tomorrow with more stories.

It's official! We are the WINNERS of the Austin 12-Hour Film Race! In addition to being 1st place, we also won the Audience Award(both at the screening and online), Best Direction and Best Writing. We are now in the running for the National prize. Vote here:

Updated the poster last night to fit Ritz Camera's specs for a 24 x 36 poster. The image had to be elongated so I just stretched it but it looked bad, so I added more border and moved the writing around. I uploaded the image and Ritz printed it out and I picked it up today. It is sweet! It's on high quality photo stock paper and I am very pleased with the color reproduction and resolution. Yay!

Last minute, I decided to make a t-shirt to wear at the film screening this weekend. I will pick it up tomorrow. Just did a little work in Photoshop and came up with this(Click on shirt for detailed image):

The 12-Hour Film Race films from Austin are up on their site. Watch them all and see if our film is actually the best and then VOTE for it to WIN!!!:

The movie is now listed as one of the official entries into the Asheville "Rejects" Film Festival:

OK, for you three folks that read this page, I will be scurrying on out to Asheville on November 9th to hang with Lloyd Kaufman and screen my movie before a live audience. I'll be sure to take my trusty digital SLR camera and take some snapshots, maybe even one of those great shots of me standing next to Lloyd in his bowtie and that "Oh my God I just crapped my pants" look you so often see him posing in. Props to the man for having a signature pose. I just brood.

This week, I sent the film off to Tromadance AND Slamdance, yes, SLAMDANCE. I filled out the paperwork a few months back and never got to the part where payment and sending the flick were involved. They sent me an email asking if it was an oversight on my part that the film was not in their possession. I missed the postmark deadline of October 9th by a day, so I just figured that was over and done with. Slamdance said I still had the opportunity to send it in if they received it by October 25th. They received it from me yesterday. Yay! It would certainly be an honor to get in because I just read an article in Indie Slate magazine(which is published out of Houston) that stated "One of the founders of Slamdance said that of 1200+ entries in one year, 1000 were a waste of tape, and presumably, everyone's time!" So we'd be ahead of the curve if it's accepted because according to their website "Last year, Slamdance got over 3200 total submissions (slightly more shorts than features). We programmed about 105 films altogether, with under 30 features and 73 shorts screening in the main competition. Statistically this does make Slamdance harder to get into than Sundance."

Viva las Ungirlfriendables!

Here's the exact email response I just got today from the Asheville "Rejects" Film Festival:

As for re-mastering the sound; it looks like I'm going to be doing that myself as well. Let's just say people find it hard to do work for free and I'd have to agree with them, but if I went by that rule I'd never get any films made.

To keep on my filmmaking toes, Team Duke is going to do the 100 Hour Film Fest. A very generous amount of time to make a 5-minute film. Several members of the group said they don't want it to deal with poop or shaving a cat, so I'm thinking horror movie this time around. Horror films seem to be the way to go to get into the business. Bleh.

We have done The Austin 12 Hour Film Fest 2007. The team was comprised of Brian Wayne, Brandon Dolgner, Juanita Rivas, Leya Czopek, Mikki Lanclos, Christine Paddo and me(that's Jeff Chaffin for those not paying attention). We got the theme "Secret" and action "Washing hands" at Noon. We had lunch at Freebird's and discussed what the story would be. We settled on Film Noir and somehow landed on wiping a butt with a cat. I thought I read somewhere that it should be somewhat family friendly and therefore didn't want any cussing in it. I can't find the page that says this, but Mikki did read something stating illegal activities could not take place nor illegal substances used or paraphenalia displayed(we were going to have a massive bong in a shot, but it had to go). We shot a majority of it at Juanita's place and a shot in an alley downtown. When it got down to it, we had less than 3 hours to edit. We turned it in at 11:45 and stuck around to see only 4 others turn theirs in. We have a good chance of winning. The screening of the film will be this Thursday at the Dobie. Can't believe they are charging so much. To see the film, click here: