So let’s say you own and operate your own video production company.  You may not be the biggest or the best, but in today’s new media you don’t have to be.  Rhett & Link are self-proclaimed “Internetainers”. They have created over 200 web videos to create a super web presence to show off their musical comedy filmmaking talents. They came to my attention as they teamed up with illustrator Billy Reid and Rush T-shirts to come up with this amazingly clever video.

It’s just like the Superbowl, we don’t mind being advertised to if we’re entertained. Check out the video below.

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief opens in theaters today. Last night at 11:00 I went upstair to wake my 11 year old son and 9 year old daughter to take them to the midnight showing (SURPRISE! They were already awake and dressed). The three of us have read all of the books in the series, but were curious about the film adaptation based on the movies trailer seen in the video below.

The movie was great. I would recommend going to see it. My 9 year old jumped a bit at the monsters, but it was rated PG so they didn’t have any gore. After reading the books and knowing the characters, the movie felt a bit rushed, and the plot-line from the books just wasn’t the same. Here’s the thing, you can’t really pack 375 pages into a 2 hour movie.

Chris Columbus the director of the Harry Potter movies took the helm on this project and sifted through all those pages and distilled them down to a 120 page movie script. To do that, he took elements of the original story and repurposed them for HIS story. Some things were left out, and some things were added. Don’t spend too much time thinking about the color of Anabeth’s hair or the type of pen that Percy has because there are much bigger issues to think about. Disney has bought the rights to the property, but that doesn’t mean that they have to make a carbon copy of the book. Interestingly enough, if they did make a 100% faithful film version of the book, the fans would probably pick out all of the little details that they left out. I may have been easier to just make a new version.

As the heroic tale is re-told throughout time, it tends to adapt and change and become a different story than the way it started. So, in my opinion, this movie is a re-telling of the book, it is not the book. It’s the Legend of Percy Jackson. I enjoyed the book enough to go see the movie, but I wasn’t so married to the book that I couldn’t enjoy the film adaptation.

I noticed my son and daughter were checking out books from the library about the Greek gods and ancients myths. This new found fascination with the ancient heroic tales of the gods and their offspring was a direct result of the book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

The book series is about a twelve year old boy diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, who is constantly getting into trouble and has been expelled from several schools. I started reading the series and was instantly hooked by author Rick Riordan’s wonderful characters, clever titles, and good humor. Here’s how the book starts.

chapter 1: I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher

Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.

If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.

If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirring inside-stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it’s only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they’ll come for you.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My name is Percy Jackson.

I have often thought about using the Hero’s Journey as outlined by Joseph Campbell to create my own stories, but I’d never thought about bringing the gods into a modern setting. I really enjoyed all of the books and was excited to hear that a movie was being made.

Here’s a sketch that I made up as a thank you to Acme Archives Direct for making my new Star Wars print a reality.

Sorry about the attention getting headlines, but I really would like to see this movie, and now I can… kinda.  I am big fan of the video game The Force Unleashed.  I liked it so much that I wanted to record every video and some of the gameplay and string it all together to make a movie (which is something that I actually did for the Star Wars Bounty Hunter game).

As I’ve been looking into these fan edits of movies, I came across a fan that had put together the scenes from the video game and made a DVD with chapters and intros and everything, but it’s in a PAL format.  I’ll have to figure something out so I can see how it looks.

The other thing that I really love about these fan edits it the DVD box art.  I’ve attached the image from the Force Unleashed movie and a different take on the original Star Wars movie.  You can explore this yourself over at FanEdit.org.

I really need to research this a bit more, but here’s what I know so far. After the release of the fan made version of Star Wars The Phantom Menace, (lovingly referred to as The Phantom Edit) there began to be more full movie and movie trailers being re-edited. Why edit the movie? Well, sometimes are memories of the movie experience are better than the movie, and sometimes simply because we think we could do better.

I saw a Facebook group dedicated to a guy calling himself Adywan who has re-edited Star Wars A New Hope. Incase you didn’t notice, I kinda love that movie, and think that it can stand the test of time, BUT, I was curious. I read a bit about how he re-edited scenes, added music, added planets and new special effects. Then I watched a bit of it and well, I liked it!

Here’s a YouTube Trailer for Star Wars: Revisited

Here’s a YouTube side by side comparison of the Attack on the Death Star

I wonder if Greedo shoots first in the cantina scene?

Here are the last of the sketch cards and commissions that I worked on in the last week or so.

Jon Favreau is an actor, screenwriter and director. He may be best known for appearing in films like Rudy and Swingers, but his work behind the camera directing super movies like Elf and Iron Man makes him truly stand apart. He has been working on a sequel to Iron Man as he found himself at with in a position to add another feather to his cap: Voice Actor. Jon has a starring role in last weeks’ episode of The Clone Wars as Pre Vizsla in The Mandalore Plot.

There are a couple of videos of him at StarWars.com here and here.   With those big earphones on in the recording studio, he reminds me of another Star Wars character.  Thank you Lobot for making those earphones sooooo stylish!

Here are some more of the contest sketch cards that I made.