Jeff is unhappy with the packaging and release date of his latest invention Crystal Clear Coffee.

Starring:
Jeff Murdoch, Tim Heurlin, Rick Stockel, Neil Arsenty, Chris Othic
Written and Directed by Joe Avella

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Master of Inventions is my first feature film. I’m using kickstarter.com to raise $2,000 for the production of the film. If you like some of the footage and want to see the finished movie, please make a pledge. Thanks!

I love editing like I love assembling Ikea furniture. Seriously! It’s Legos for adults.

The trick with editing, I find, is to treat it like a sculpture. You keep making passes, over and over and over and over, making corrections here and there. It’s dreadful at first because it’s bulky and doesn’t resemble anything watchable. But soon you get to a point where you’re stressing over one frame staying or going.

After the 1000th watch it becomes white noise. Walk away for a while. Enough time to get out of editing mode. One day is perfect by a couple hours will do. Don’t watch it in your editing software, it’s better to see it in a movie player like QuickTime. The scene will look remarkably fresh and that ‘hard decisions’ over one frame will suddenly be easy.

With all creative endeavors you need periods of intense focus balanced by periods where you completely ignore it. I’m trying very hard to apply this fact to my own life. If you work on something all the time you’ll just stress over it, lose all the joy and become no fun to be around.

For the sake of your sanity and your friendships: Balance that shit out!

My interviews are up on Gapers Block. Myself and two other local filmmakers (Steve Delahoyde and Paul Thomas) sat down for a roundtable type chat about filmmaking in Chicago. It was fun!

Read the article here
The was a so a brief Q&A

New clip from Master of Inventions. In this scene, Jeff slips into a daydream during a boring meeting…

from Joe Avella on Vimeo.

It’s an homage to the bank scene from They Live:

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