ARCADE

We shot all around Chinatown this week. Definitely captured the neighborhood. Here is our director of photography, Owen Strock, getting the very necessary shot of duck and chicken hanging in the window. You can barely see it, but in the background is a cook in his chef whites chopping meat. Owen is amazing at rack focusing, which he nailed on this shot.

We are in the middle of a lot of shooting. I will be documenting the process. Check our Flickr page and Facebook (www.facebook.com/arcademovie) for more!

-Kurt

Last Friday I was a part of a panel discussion about arcades at NY Comic Con. It was an amazing time. Somehow, at 11 am on a Friday, we filled the room with people eager to hear a talk about arcades. Leaves me feeling hopeful that the movie will receive a lot of attention when it is finished! The panel was moderated by Tal Blevins who has been at IGN since the early days, 13 years and counting! He was the perfect host. Seth Killian was there providing an incredibly unique perspective (As far as I can tell he has one of the coolest jobs in the world). Jamin Warren was beyond articulate, as always. And let me state this here: In 20 years, Kill Screen will be the Rolling Stone of video games. The Harlem Hero, Norman Burgess, was there waxing poetic about Chinatown Fair. And the star of the panel, Henry Cen, “Golden Cen” aka 50 Cen, was wonderfully cynical and cracking up the audience with his musings.

Thank you all for coming and saying hi. I met some new friends and look forward to continuing this discussion!

-Kurt

I’m sad to report that another arcade has been lost to modern times. Denjin arcade, known for being the Mecca of West Coast 3^rd Strike as well as the host of countless tournaments (including the 2009 SBO qualifiers and Cali Regionals) closed its doors for good yesterday. Denjin truly exemplified what a real arcade was: a place of community and competition, where players went to learn and level up. This is sadly another nail in the coffin of the American arcade.

-Reed

Rooftop Film's Kill Screen Video Game Film Festival

Rooftop Films and Kill Screen Magazine have put together an evening of short films for Saturday, July 30th in Brooklynn New York. We have put together a work in progress excerpt to show! Our piece introduces Chinatown Fair and one of our favorite people, Anthony Cali Jr, aka HelgenX.

Check out the link for more info!

KILL SCREEN VIDEOGAME FILM FESTIVALSHORT FILM PROGRAM$10 ONLINE OR AT THE DOOR.
8:00 PMSATURDAY JUL 30, 2011

8:00PMDoors Open8:30PMLive Music9:00PMFilms Begin11:30PMReception in Courtyard with Indie Video Games

Venue:

THE OLD AMERICAN CAN FACTORY
On the roof of The Old American Can Factory
GOWANUS/SLOPE
232 Third St. at 3rd Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215
F/G to Carroll St. or M/R to Union

Screen Grabs: Ivan’s Puma Tapers

Behold, the Puma Tapers. Pictured here with one of the In The Groove gods of Chinatown Fair, Ivan Yeung, these shoes are the must-have of music games. Like a Mad Catz TE to fighting gamers, like Wonderboy to Roy Hobbs, or a hefty .44 to Dirty Harry, these bad boys are the go-to for any serious DDR or ITG player. If you want to be doing this, you had better be wearing those.

-Reed

Photo by Michael Nagle (originally appeared in the August 4th, 2010 New York Times)

Today we are interviewing Ivan, a devoted rhythm game player and a former regular at Chinatown Fair, where he maintained the In The Groove arcade machine, while hacking it to keep updating the song selection. It amazes me how passionate the ITG community is. The story of how the the game series, which is widely considered to be the best of all music dance games, was discontinued after a lawsuit against the game’s manufacturer and how the community took matters into their own hands to keep the game alive. The Wikipedia entry on In The Groove is worth reading. The “Machine Hacking” section is particularly interesting to me.

“Technologically savvy players have found methods of hacking additional content onto an “In the Groove 2” machine. The most popular methods involve utilizing a live Linux distribution (most methods SLAX Frodo) to boot the machine to a rogue operating system that the user has control over. Additional songs are loaded onto a USB card (plugged into the Player 1 USB port), and a USB keyboard (plugged into the Player 2 USB port) is used to type commands at the Linux console. Most of these hacks utilize an option in one of StepMania’s configuration files, Static.ini, to load songs and content from additional locations other than the main song folder.”

-Kurt

We are looking for an intern with a passion for video games, arcades, and movies. Experience with social media and blogging are a must. Living in NYC area is a plus, but not a deal breaker. Responsibilities will include collaborating with us on our online strategy, research, and blogging. Internship includes a stipend.

@ArcadeMovie Shot at Next Level today! Thanks to all the people there. See you soon… http://t.co/5AQWT9E

5/25/2011 - Notes From A Kickstarter Project

We have 6 days left until our Kickstarter deadline at 11:59 PM on May 31st. Some good interviews I did last week should be posted on the net this week. Hopefully the project will get a few more boosts from the press and we will eclipse 30k.

I just finished my submission to IFP’s Documentary Showcase for this fall. If we are selected we get to share the movie with a ton of really cool people in the film industry during a week long event at Lincoln Center. Film festival directors, distributors, tv networks, etc. Some of my favorite documentary films have gone through the festival. My fingers are crossed.

Last week Irene and I had the pleasure of meeting Matt Hunter and Steve Haske, two of the hosts of the excellent podcast, A Jumps B Shoots. They were in town from Portland, Oregon to cover Blip Fest 2011 and record some podcasts. I was honored to geek out with them. It was a lot of fun talking with them. I think the podcast should hit itunes next week.

Irene and I also met Jamin Warren, the founder of the magazine/blog KILL SCREEN. It was great meeting him after having communicated via email for the past few months. He was one of the earliest supporters of the movie and has some ideas of how we can work together in the coming months! Very cool ideas.

I was also interviewed by Ben Gilbert, Joystiq’s writer in NYC. It was great to sit down with him. I think I learned more from him than the other way around! He is currently writing a feature piece about the movie that will be posted this week.

We rocked out at Blip Fest on Thursday night. My two highlights were TALK TO ANIMALS from Baltimore and NYC’s own ANAMANAGUCHI. I have listened to “Airbrushed” at least 200 times since the show. I was moshing and dancing so hard during their set that I got a cramp and had to ease up. Looking forward to hearing recorded versions of their new songs that they played at the show.

I’ll be posting some more tomorrow.

-K

@arcademovie

facebook.com/arcademovie

Anthony Cali, the traveller

I saw one of my favorite documentary filmmakers speak once. An audience member asked if he had ever become friends with subjects in his films. His reply, in short, was that he was not there to make friends. He was there to make movies. I get what he was saying, yet my experience thus far has been so different. Not necessarily by choice. It’s just a product of who I am. You can’t prevent forming friendships when a real connection between two people is made. And why would you want to?

I met Anthony Cali Jr. while I was filming at the arcade. Right away we hit it off and next thing I knew he began to help Irene and I with the movie. Anthony grew up in the Lower East Side and was a longtime CF regular. His pops, Anthony Sr., first took him there as a 7 year old. His roots run deep under Manhattan. Anthony’s photographs of the arcade can be seen on our Kickstarter page. He is a big camera nerd, and I have yet to hang with him, without hearing about some new lens or obscure Japanese digital SLR model. Anthony is a real wise guy. It’s in his blood.

Anthony left NYC this week to visit Japan.

Two nights before his flight to Japan, Anthony told me that when he saw me with my camera at Chinatown Fair he could tell right away I wasn’t from NYC, but instead of passing judgement he decided to see what I was about. He saw in my eyes that I was genuine and truly excited to be filming at CF. So he introduced himself. I remember the exact moment we met. I was filming the crew playing 3rd Strike. I was drawn to the 3rd Strike cabinet. There was lots of trash talking, beer drinking, and a real sense of camaraderie. Moments after meeting I began filming Anthony. That’s when I captured the clip of Anthony that’s in the trailer. He says, “This place should be a landmark if anything, its so fucked up. You got so many different types of people coming here. This is the only place you can really be yourself in.” Anthony is about as eloquent and introspective as they come. His musings have already had a big effect on the direction of the documentary.

I knew he would become an integral part of the movie after that night. What I didn’t realize was that he would become a friend.

Anthony has a blog documenting his NYC adventures, The New York Blues, and he is going to keep it going with a new site documenting his adventure across the sea. I’ll post the new blog up when I got the URL.